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THE INNOCENT 
ADVENTURESS 


By 

MARY HASTINGS BRADLEY 

The Innocent Adventuress 

The Fortieth Door 

The Wine of Astonishment 

The Palace of Darkened 
Windows 

The Splendid Chance 
The Favor of Kings 


These Are Appleton Books 

D. APPLETON & COMPANY 
Publishers New York 


T 229 A 



THE INNOCENT 
ADVENTURESS 


MARY HASTINGS BRADLEY 

AUTHOR OF “THE FORTIETH DOOR,” “THE PALACE OF DARK- 
ENED WINDOWS,” “THE WINE OF ASTONISHMENT,” 

“THE SPLENDID CHANCE,” ETC. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK LONDON 


1921 



COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 

D. APPLETON iAND COMPANY 




JAN 24 1321 


Copyright, 1920, by The McCall Co., Inc. 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OE AMERICA 


", 

©CU605505 


k 


TO 

MY SISTER 

SYLVIA CORWIN FRANCISCO 



* 




♦ 















* 













CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Eavesdropper 7 

II. Undiscovered Country 21 

III. Luncheon at the Lodge 47 

IV. R1-R1 Sings Again 67 

V. Between Dances 88 

VI. Two — And a Mountain 106 

VII. Johnny Becomes Inevitable 127 

VIII. Johnny Becomes Explicit 143 

IX. Mrs. Blair Regrets 157 

X. Fantasy 173 

XI. Morning Light 204 

XII. Journey’s End 235 








» 


V 







THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


CHAPTER I 

THE EAVESDROPPER 

M aria Angelina was eavesdrop- 
ping. Not upon her sister Lucia 
and Paolo Tosti whom she had been 
assigned to chaperon by reading a book to her- 
self in the adjoining room — no, they were 
safely busy with piano and violin, and she was 
heartily bored, anyway, with their inanities. 
Voices from another direction had pricked 
her to alertness. 

Maria Angelina was in the corner room of 
the Palazzo Santonini, a dim and beautiful old 
library with faded furnishings whose west 
arch of doorway looked into the pretentious re- 
ception room where the fiances were amusing 
themselves with their music and their whisper- 
i 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


ings. It was quite advanced, this allowing 
them to be so alone, but the Contessa San- 
tonini was an American and, moreover, the 
wedding was not far off. 

One can be indulgent when the settlements 
are signed. 

So only Maria Angelina and her book were 
stationed for propriety, and, wanting another 
book, she had gone to the shelves and through 
the north door, ajar, caught the words that 
held her intent. 

“Three of them!” a masculine voice uttered 
explosively, and Maria knew that Papa was 
speaking of his three daughters, Lucia, Juli- 
etta and Maria Angelina — and she knew, too, 
that Papa had just come from the last inter- 
view with the Tostis’ lawyers. 

The Tostis had been stiff in their demands 
and Papa had been more complaisant than he 
should have been. Altogether that marriage 
was costing him dear. 

He had been figuring now with Mamma for 
a pencil went clattering to the floor. 


2 


THE EAVESDROPPER 


“And something especial/' he proclaimed 
bitterly, “will have to be done for Julietta!" 

At that the eavesdropper could smile, a faint 
little smile of shy pride and self-reliance. 

Nothing especial would have to be done for 
her! A decent dowry, of course, as befitting 
a daughter of the house, but she would need 
no more, for Maria was eighteen, as white as 
a lily and as slender as an aspen, with big, 
dark eyes like strange pools of night in her 
child's face. 

Whereas poor Julietta ! 

“Madre Dio !" said Papa indignantly. “For 
what did we name her Julietta? And born in 
Verona! A pretty sentiment indeed. But it 
was of no inspiration to her — none!" 

Mamma did not laugh although Papa's sud- 
den chuckle after his explosion was most ir- 
resistible. 

“But if Fate went by names," he continued, 
“then would Maria Angelina be for the life of 
religion." And he chuckled again. 

3 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


Still Mamma did not laugh. Her pencil was 
scratching. 

“It’s a pity,” murmured Papa, “that you did 
not embrace the faith, my dear, for then we 
might arrange this matter. They used to man- 
age these things in the old days.” 

“Send Julietta into a convent?” cried 
Mamma in a voice of sudden energy. 

Maria could not see but she knew that the 
Count shrugged. 

“She appears built to coif Saint Catherine,” 
he murmured. 

“Julietta is a dear girl,” said the Contessa in 
a warm voice. 

“When one knows her excellencies.” 

“She will do very well — with enough dow- 
ry.” 

“Enough dowry — that is it ! It will take all 
that is left for the two of them to push Julietta 
into a husband’s arms !” 

When the Count was annoyed he dealt di- 
rectly with facts — a proceeding he preferred to 
avoid at other moments. 


4 


THE EAVESDROPPER 


Behind her curtains Maria drew a troubled 
breath. She, too, felt the family responsibility 
for Julietta — dear Julietta, with her dumpy 
figure and ugly face. Julietta was nineteen 
and now that Lucia was betrothed it was Juli- 
etta's turn. 

If only it could be known that Julietta had 
a pretty dot! 

Maria stood motionless behind the curtains, 
her winged imagination rushing to meet Juli- 
etta's future, fronting the indifference, the 
neglect, the ridicule before which Julietta's 
sensitive, shamed spirit would suffer and 
bleed. She could see her partnerless at balls, 
lugged heavily about to teas and dinners, 
shrinking eagerly and hopelessly back into the 
refuge of the paternal home. . . . Yet Juli- 
etta had once whispered to her that she wanted 
to die if she could never marry and have an 
armful of bambinos! 

Maria Angelina's young heart contracted 
with sharp anxiety. Things were in a bad way 
with her family indeed. There had always 
5 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


been difficulties, for Papa was extravagant 
and ever since brother Francisco had been in 
the army, he, too, had his debts, but Mamma 
had always managed so wonderfully! But the 
war had made things very difficult, and now 
peace had made them more difficult still. There 
had been one awful time when it had looked 
as if the carriages and horses would have to 
go and they would be reduced to sharing a 
barouche with some one else in secret, proud 
distress — like the Manzios and the Benedettos 
who took their airings alternately, each with 
a different crested door upon the identical ve- 
hicle — but Mamma had overcome that crisis 
and the social rite of the daily drive upon the 
Pincian had been sacredly preserved. But ap- 
parently these settlements were too much, even 
for Mamma. 

Then her name upon her mother’s lips 
brought the eavesdropper to swift attention. 

It appeared that the Contessa had a plan. 

Maria Angelina could go to visit Mamma’s 
cousins in America. They were rich — that is 
6 


THE EAVESDROPPER 


understood of Americans; even Mamma had 
once been rich when she was a girl, Maria 
dimly remembered having heard — and they 
would give Maria a chance to meet people. 
. . . Men did not ask settlements in America. 
They earned great sums and could please them- 
selves with a pretty, penniless face. . . . And 
what was saved on Maria’s dowry would plump 
out Julietta’s. 

Thunderstruck, the Count objected. Maria 
was his favorite. 

“Send Julietta to America, then,” he pro- 
tested, but swallowed that foolishness at Mam- 
ma’s calm, “To what good?” 

To what good, indeed! It would never do 
to risk the cost of a trip to America upon 
Julietta. 

Sulkily Papa argued that the cost in any 
case was prohibitive. But Mamma had the 
figures. 

“One must invest to receive,” she insisted; 
and when he grumbled, “But to lose the child?” 
7 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


she broke out, “Am / not losing her?” on a 
note that silenced him. 

Then she added cheerfully, “But it will be 
for her own good.” 

“You want her to marry an American? You 
are not satisfied, then, with Italians?” said 
Papa playfully leaning over to ruffle Mamma’s 
soft, light hair and at his movement Maria 
Angelina fled swiftly from those curtains back 
to her post, and sat very still, a book in front 
of her, a haze of romance swimming between 
it and her startled eyes. 

America. ... A rich husband. . . . Travel. 
. . . Adventure. . . . The unknown. . . . 

It was wonderful. It was unbelievable. . . . 
It was desperate. 

It was a hazard of the sharpest chance. 

That knowledge brought a chill of gravity 
into the hot currents of her beating heart — a 
chill that was the cold breath of a terrific 
responsibility. She felt herself the hope, the 
sole resource of her family. She was the die 
8 


THE EAVESDROPPER 


on which their throw of fortune was to be 
cast. 

Dropping her book she slid down from her 
chair and crossed to a long mirror in an old 
carved frame where a dove was struggling in 
a falcon’s talons while Cupids drew vain bows, 
and in the dimmed glass stared in passionate 
searching. 

She was so childish, so slight looking. She 
was white — that was the skin from Mamma — 
and now she wondered if it were truly a charm. 
Certainly Lucia preferred her own olive 
tints. 

And her eyes were so big and dark, like 
caverns in her face, and her lips were mere 
scarlet threads. The beauties she had seen 
were warm-colored, high-bosomed, full-lipped. 

Her distrust extended even to her coronet of 
black braids. 

Her uncertain youth had no vision of the 
purity and pride*of that braid-bound head, of 
the brilliance of the dark eyes against the satin 
skin, of the troubling glamour of the red little 
9 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


mouth. In the clear definition of the delicate 
features, the arch of the high eyebrows, the 
sweep of the shadowy lashes, her childish hope 
had never dreamed of more than mere pretti- 
ness and now she was torturingly questioning 
that. 

“Practicing your smiles, my dear?” said a 
voice from the threshold, Lucia’s voice with 
the mockery of the successful, and Maria An- 
gelina turned from her dim glass with a flame 
of scarlet across her pallor, and joined, with 
an angry heart, in the laugh which her sister 
and young Tosti raised against her. 

But Maria Angelina had a tongue. 

“But yes — for the better fish are yet un- 
caught, ” she retorted with a flash of the eyes 
toward the young man, and Paolo, all ardor as 
he was for Lucia’s olive and rose, shot a glance 
of tickled humor at her impudence. 

He promised himself some merry passes 
with the little sister-in-law. 

Lucia resented the glances. 

“Wait your turn, little one,” she scoffed, 
io 


THE EAVESDROPPER 


“You will be in pinafores until our poor Juli- 
etta is wed,” and she laughed, unkindly. 

There were times, Maria felt furiously, 
when she hated Lucia. 

Her championing heart resolved that Juli- 
etta should not be left unwed and defenseless 
to that mockery. Julietta should have her 
chance at life! 

Not a word of the great plan was breathed 
officially to the girl, although the mother’s ex- 
pectancy for mail revealed that a letter had 
already been sent, until that expectancy was 
rewarded by a letter with the American post- 
mark. Then the drama of revelation was ex- 
quisitely enacted. 

It appeared that the Blairs of New York, 
Mamma’s dear cousins, were insistent that one 
of Mamma’s daughters should know Mamma’s 
country and Mamma’s relatives. They had a 
daughter about Maria Angelina’s age so Maria 
Angelina had been selected for the visit. The 


ii 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


girls would have a delightful time together. 

. . . Maria would start in June. 

Vaguely Maria Angelina recalled the Blairs 
as she had seen them some six years ago in 
Rome — a kindly Cousin Jim who had given 
her sweets and laughed bewilderingly at her 
and a Cousin Jane with beautiful blonde hair 
and cool white gowns. Their daughter, Ruth, 
had not been with them, so Maria had no ac- 
quaintance at all with her, but only the recol- 
lection of occasional postcards to keep the name 
in memory. 

She remembered once that there had been 
talk of this Cousin Ruth’s coming to school for 
a winter in Rome and that Mamma had be- 
stirred herself to discover the correct schools, 
but nothing had ever come of it. The war had 
intervened. 

And now she was to visit them. . . . 

“You are going to America just as I went to 
Italy at your age,” cried Mamma. “And — 
who knows ? — you too, may meet your fate on 
the trip!” 


12 


THE EAVESDROPPER 


Mamma would overdo it, thought Maria 
Angelina nervously, her eyes downcast for 
fear her mother would read their discomfort 
and her knowledge of the pitiful duplicity, and 
her cheeks a quick shamed scarlet. 

“She will have to — to repair the expense/’ 
flashed Lucia with a shrill laugh. “Such ex- 
penditure, when you have just been preaching 
economy on my trousseau !” 

“One must economize on the trousseau when 
the bridegroom has cost the fortune/’ Maria 
found her wicked little tongue to say and Lucia 
turned sallow beneath her olive. 

Briskly Mamma intervened. “We are think- 
ing not of one of you but all. Now no more 
words, my little ones. There is too much to be 
done/’ 

There was indeed, with this trip to be ar- 
ranged for before the onrush of Lucia’s prep- 
aration! Once committed to the great adven- 
ture it quickly took on the outer aspects of 
reality. There were clothes to be made and 
clothes to be bought, there were discussions, 
13 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


decisions, debates and conjectures and consul- 
tations. A thousand preparations to be pushed 
in haste, and at once the big bedroom of Mam- 
ma blossomed with delicate fabrics, with 
bright ribbons and frilly laces, and amid the 
blossoming, the whir of the machine and the 
feet and hands of the two-lire-a-day seamstress 
went like mad clockwork, while in and out 
Mamma’s friends came hurrying, at the ru- 
mor, to hint of congratulation or suggest a 
style, an advice. 

The contagion of excitement seized every- 
one, so that even Lucia was inspired to lend 
her clever fingers from her own preparations 
for September. 

“But not to be back by then! Not here for 
my wedding — that would be too odd!” she 
complained with the persistent ill-will she had 
shown the expedition. 

Shrewd enough to divine its purpose and 
practical enough to perceive the necessity for 
it, the older girl cherished her instinctive ob- 
jection to any pleasure that did not include 
14 


THE EAVESDROPPER 


her in its scope or that threatened to overcast 
her own festivities. 

“That will depend/’ returned Mamma se- 
dately, “upon the circumstance. Our cousins 
may not easily find a suitable chaperon for 
your sister’s return. And they may have plans 
for her entertainment. We must leave that 
to them.” 

A little panic-stricken, Maria Angelina per- 
ceived that she was being left to them — until 
otherwise disposed of! 

So fast had preparations whirled them on, 
that parting was upon the girl before she 
divined the coming pain of it. Then in the last 
hours her heart was wrung. 

She stared at the dear familiar rooms, the 
streets and the houses with a look of one al- 
ready lost to her world, and her eyes clung to 
the figures oi her family as if to relinquish the 
sight of them would dissolve them from exis- 
tence. 

They were tragic, those following, imploring 
15 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


eyes, but they were not wet. Maria under- 
stood it was too late to weep. It was necessary 
to go. The magnitude of the sums already in- 
vested in her affair staggered her. They were 
so many pledges, those sums ! 

But America was so desolately far. 

She could not sleep, that last night. She 
lay in the big four-poster where once heavy 
draperies had shut in the slumbers of dead 
and gone Contessas, and she watched the 
square of moonlight travel over the painted 
cherubs on the ceiling. There was always a 
lump in her throat to be swallowed, and often 
the tears soaked into the big feather pillows, 
but there were no sobs to rouse the house- 
hold. 

Julietta, beside her, slept very comfortably. 

But the most terrible moment of all was that 
last look of Mamma and that last clasp of her 
hands upon the deck of the steamer. 

“You must tell me everything, little one,” 
the Contessa Santonini kept saying hurriedly. 
She was constrained and repetitious in the grip 
16 


THE EAVESDROPPER 


of her emotion, as they stood together, just 
out of earshot of the Italian consul's wife who 
was chaperoning the young girl upon her voy- 
age. 

“Write me all about the people you meet 
and what they say to you, and what you do. 
Remember that I am still Mamma if I am 
across the ocean and I shall be waiting to hear. 
. . . And remember that but few of your ideas 
of America may be true. Americans are not all 
the types you have read of or the tourists you 
have met. You must expect a great difference. 
... I should be strange, myself, now in 
America." 

Maria's quick sensitiveness divined a note of 
secret yearning. 

“Yes, Mamma," she said obediently, tighten- 
ing her clasp upon her mother’s hands. 

“You must be on guard against mistakes, 
Maria Angelina," said the other insistently — 
as if she had not said that a dozen times be- 
fore! “Because American girls do things it 
may be not be wise for you to do. You will 
1 7 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


be of interest because you are different. Be 
very careful, my little one.” 

“Yes, Mamma,” said the girl again. 

“As to your money — you understand it must 
last. There can be little to pay when you are 
a guest. But send to Papa and me your ac- 
counts as I have told you.” 

“Yes, Mamma.” 

“You will not let the American freedom 
turn your head. You will be wise — Oh, I trust 
you, Maria Angelina, to be very wise !” 

How wise Maria Angelina thought herself ! 
She lifted a face that shone with confidence 
and understanding and for all her quivering 
lips she smiled. 

“My baby!” said the mother suddenly in 
English and took that face between her hands 
and kissed it. 

“You will be careful,” she began again ab- 
ruptly, and then stopped. 

Too late for more cautions. And the child 
was so sage. 

But it was such a little figure that stood 
18 


THE EAVESDROPPER 


there, such young eyes that smiled so con- 
fidently into hers. . . . And America was a 
long, long way off. 

The bugles were blowing for visitors to be 
away. Just one more hurried kiss and hasty 
clasp. 

An overwhelming fright seized upon the girl 
as the mother went down the ship’s ladder into 
the small boat that put out so quickly for the 
shore. 

Suppose she should fail them! After all she 
was not so wise — and not so very pretty. And 
she had no experience — none ! 

The sun, dancing on the bright waves, hurt 
Maria Angelina’s eyes. She had to shut them, 
they watered so foolishly. And something in 
her young breast wanted to cry after that boat, 
“Take me back — take me back to my home,” 
but something else in her forbade and would 
have died of shame before it uttered such 
weakness. 

For poor Julietta, for dear anxious Mamma, 
she knew herself the only hope. 

19 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


So steadily she waved her handkerchief 
long after she had lost the responding flutter 
from the boat. 

She was not crying now. She felt exalted. 
She pressed closer to the rail and stared out 
very solemnly over the blue and gold bay to 
beautiful Naples. . . . Suddenly her heart 
quickened. Vesuvius was moving. The far- 
off shores of Italy were slipping by. Above 
her the black smoke that had been coming 
faster and faster from the great funnels 
streamed backward like long banners. 

Maria Angelina was on her way. 


CHAPTER II 


UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 

W ITH whatever emotion Jane Blair 
had received the startling demand 
upon her hospitality she rallied nobly 
to the family call. She left her daughter in 
the Adirondacks where they were summering 
and descended upon her husband in his New 
York office to rout him out to meet the girl 
with her. 

“An infernal shame — that's what I call it!” 
Jim Blair grumbled, facing the steaming heat 
of the unholy customs shed. “It's an outrage 
— an imposition " 

“Oh, not all that, Jim! Lucy — that's the 
mother — and I used to visit like this when we 
were girls. It was done then," his wife replied 
with an air of equable amusement. 


21 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


She added, “I rather think I did most of the 
visiting. I was awf’ly fond of Lucy.” 

“That’s different. You’ll have a total 
stranger on your hands. . . . Are you sure she 
speaks English?” 

“Oh, dear yes, she speaks English — don’t 
you remember her in Rome? She was the 
littlest one. All the children speak English, 
Lucy wrote, except Francisco who is Very 
Italian,’ which means he is a fascinating spend- 
thrift like the father, I suppose. ... I imag- 
ine,” said Mrs. Blair, “that Lucy has not found 
life in a palace all a bed of roses.” 

“I remember the palace. . . . Warming 
pans!” said Mr. Blair grimly. 

His ill-humor lasted until the first glimpse 
of Maria Angelina’s slender figure, and the 
first glance of Maria Angelina’s trustfully ap- 
pealing eyes. 

“Welcome to America,” he said then very 
heartily, both his hands closing over the small 
fingers. “Welcome — very welcome, my dear.” 

And though Maria Angelina never knew it 


22 


UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 


and Cousin Jane Blair never told, that was 
Maria Angelina's first American triumph. 

Some nine hours afterwards a stoutish 
gentleman in gray and a thinnish lady in beige 
and a fragile looking girl in white wound their 
way from the outer to the inner circle of tables 
next the dancing floor of the Vandevoort. 

The room was crowded with men in light 
serge and women in gay summer frocks; bright 
lights were shining under pink shades and 
sprays of pink flowers on every table were 
breathing a faint perfume into an air already 
impregnated with women's scents and heavy 
with odors of rich food. Now and then a salt- 
ish breeze stole through the draped windows 
on the sound but was instantly scattered by the 
vigor of the hidden, whirling fans. 

Behind palms an orchestra clashed out the 
latest Blues and in the cleared space couples 
were speeding up and down to the syncopa- 
tions, while between tables agile waiters bal- 
anced overloaded trays or whisked silver cov- 

23 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


ers off scarlet lobsters or lit mysterious little 
lights below tiny bubbling caldrons. 

Maria Angelina’s soft lips were parted with 
excitement and her dark eyes round with won- 
dering. This, indeed, was a new world. . . . 

It was gay — gayer than the Hotel Excelsior 
at Rome! It was a carnival of a dinner! 

Ever since morning, when the cordiality of 
the new-found cousins had dissipated the first 
forlorn homesickness of arrival, she had been 
looking on at scenes that were like a film, cease- 
lessly unrolling. 

After luncheon. Cousin Jim with impulsive 
hospitality had carried her off to see the Big 
Town — an expedition from which his wife re- 
lievedly withdrew — and he had whirled Maria 
Angelina about in motors, plunged her into 
roaring subways, whisked her up dizzying ele- 
vators and brought her out upon unbelievable 
heights, all the time expounding and explain- 
ing with that passionate, possessive pride of 
the New Yorker by adoption, which left his 
young guest with the impression that he owned 
24 


UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 


at least half the city and was personally re- 
sponsible for the other half. 

It had been very wonderful but Maria had 
expected New York to be wonderful. And she 
was not interested, save superficially, in cities. 
Life was the stuff her dreams were made on, 
and life was unfolding vividly to her eager eyes 
at this gay dinner, promising her enchanted 
senses the incredible richness and excitement 
for which she had come. 

And though she sat up very sedately, like 
a well-behaved child in the midst of blazing 
carnival, her glowing face, her breathless lips 
and wide, shining eyes revealed her innocent 
ardors and young expectancies. 

She was very proud of herself, in the midst 
of all the prideful splendor, proud of her new, 
absurdly big white hat, of her new, absurdly 
small white shoes, and of her new, white mull 
frock, soft and clinging and exquisite with the 
patient embroidery of the needlewoman. 

Its low cut neck left her throat bare and 
about her throat hung the string of white coral 
25 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


that her father had given her in parting — 
white coral, with a pale, pale pink suffusing it. 

“Like a young girl’s dreams,” Santonini had 
said. “Snowy white — with a blush stealing 
over them.” 

That was so like dear Papa ! What dreams 
did he think his daughter was to have in this 
New World upon her golden quest? And yet, 
though Maria Angelina’s mocking little wit 
derided, her young heart believed somehow in 
the union of all the impossibilities. Dreams 
and blushes . . . and good fortune. . . . 

Strange food was set before her; delicious 
jellied cold soups, and scarlet lobsters with 
giant claws; and Maria Angelina discovered 
that excitement had not dulled her appetite. 

The music sounded again and Cousin Jim 
asked her to dance. Shyly she protested that 
she did not know the American dances, and 
then, to her astonishment, he turned to his 
wife, and the two hurried out upon the floor, 
leaving her alone and unattended at that con- 
spicuous table. 


26 


UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 


That was American freedom with a venge- 
ance! She sat demurely, not daring to raise 
her lashes before the scrutiny she felt must be 
beating upon her, until her cousins returned, 
warm-faced and breathless. 

“You’ll learn all this as soon as you get to 
the Lodge,” Cousin Jim prophesied, in consola- 
tion. 

Maria Angelina smiled absently, her big eyes 
brilliant. Unconsciously she was wondering 
what dancing could mean to these elders of 
hers. . . . Dancing was the stir of youth . . . 
the carnival of the blood . . . the beat of ex- 
pectancy and excitement. . . . 

“Why, there’s Barry Elder!” Cousin Jane 
gave a quick cry of pleasure. 

“Barry Elder?” 

Cousin Jim turned to look, and Maria An- 
gelina looked too, and saw a young man mak- 
ing his way to their table. He was a tall, thin, 
brown young man with close-cropped curly 
brown hair, and very bright, deep-set eyes. 
27 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


He was dressed immaculately in white with 
a gay tie of lavender. 

“Barry? You in town?” Cousin Jane greet- 
ed him with an exaggerated astonishment as 
he shook her hand. 

Maria Angelina noted that he did not kiss 
it. She had read that this was not done openly 
in America but was a mark of especial tender- 
ness. 

“Why not?” he retorted promptly. “You 
seem to forget, dear lady, that I am again a 
wor-rking man, without whom the World’s 
Greatest Daily would lose half its circulation. 
Of course I’m here.” 

“I thought you might be taking a vacation 
— in York Harbor,” she said, laughing. 

“Oh, cat !” he derided. “Kitty, kitty, kitty.” 

“Don’t let her kid you, Barry,” advised 
Cousin Jim, delving into his lobster. 

“But since you are here,” went on Cousin 
Jane, “you can meet my little cousin from Italy, 
which is the reason why we are here. Her 
boat came in this morning and she has never 
28 


UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 


been away from home before. Mr. Elder, the 
Signorina Santonini.” 

“Welcome to the city, Signorina/’ said the 
young man, with a quick, bright smile, stoop- 
ing to gaze under the huge, white hat. He had 
odd eyes, not large, but vivid hazel, with yellow 
lights in them. 

“How do you like New York? What do 
you think of America? What is your opinion 
of prohibition and the uniformity of divorce 
laws? Have you ever written vers libref 
Are ” 

“Barry, stop bombarding the child!” ex- 
claimed Mrs. Blair. “You are the first young 
man she has met in America. Stop making 
her fear the race.” 

“Take him away and dance with him, Jane,” 
said Mr. Blair. “This was probably pre- 
arranged, you know.” 

If he believed it, he looked very tranquil, the 
startled Maria Angelina thought, surprised 
into an upward glance. The two men were 
smiling very frankly at each other. Mrs. Blair 
29 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


did not protest but rose, remarking, “Come, 
Barry, since we are discovered. You can have 
something cool afterwards.” 

“I’ll have little Cousin afterwards,” said 
Barry Elder. “I want to be the first young 
man she has danced with in America.” 

“You won’t be the last,” Mr. Blair told him 
with a twinkling glance at Maria Angelina’s 
lovely little face. 

“One of Jane’s youngsters,” he added, ex- 
planatorily to her. “She always has a lot 
around — she says they are the companions her 
son would have had if she’d had one.” 

Then, before Maria Angelina’s polite but be- 
wildered attention, he said more comprehen- 
sibly, “You’ll find Jane a lot younger than 
Ruth . . . Barry’s a clever chap — special work 
on one of the papers. Was in the aviation. Did 
a play that fluked last year. Too much Har- 
vard in it, I expect. But a clever chap, very 
clever. Like him,” he added decisively. 

Maria Angelina had heard of Harvard. 
Her mother’s father had been a Harvard man. 


30 


UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 


But she did not understand just why too much 
Harvard would make a play fluke nor what a 
play did when it fluked, but she asked no ques- 
tions and sat very still, looking out at the 
dancing couples. 

She saw her Cousin Jane whirling past. 
She tried to imagine her mother dancing with 
young men at the Hotel Excelsior and she 
could not. Already she wondered if she had 
better write everything. 

Then the dancing pair came back to them 
and the young man sat down and talked a little 
to her cousins. But at the music’s recom- 
mencement he turned directly to her. 

“Signorina, are you going to do me the 
honor?” 

He had a merry way with him as if he were 
laughing ever so little at her, and Maria An- 
gelina’s heart which had been beating quite 
fast before began to skip dizzily. 

She thanked Heaven that it was a waltz for, 
while the new steps were unknown, Maria 
could waltz — that was a gift from Papa. 

3i 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“With pleasure, Signor, ; ” she murmured, 
rising. 

“But you must take off your hat,” Mrs. Blair 
told her. 

“My hat? Takeoff?” 

“That brim is too wide, my dear. You 
couldn't dance.” 

“But to go bareheaded — like a peasant?” 
Maria Angelina faltered and they laughed. 

“It doesn't matter — it's much better than 
that brim,” Mrs. Blair pronounced and obedi- 
ently Maria's small hands rose and removed 
the overshadowing whiteness from the dark 
little head with its coronet of heavy braids. 

She did not raise her eyes to see Barry 
Elder's sudden flash of astonishment. Shyly 
she slipped within his clasp and let him swing 
her out into the circle of dancers. 

Maria Angelina could waltz, indeed. She 
was fairy-footed, and for some moments 
Barry Elder was content to dance without 
speaking; then he bent his head closer to those 
dark braids. 


32 


UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 


“So I am the first young man you have met 
in America ?” 

Maria Angelina looked up through her 
lashes in quick gayety. 

“It is my first day, Signor !” 

“Your first American — Ah, but on the boat ! 
There must have been young men on that boat, 
American young men?” 

“On that boat? Signor!” Maria Angelina 
laughed mischievously. “One reads of such in 
novels — yes? But as to that boat, it was a 
floating nunnery.” 

“Oh, come now,” he protested amusedly, 
“there must have been some men !” 

“Some men, yes — a ship’s officer, some mar- 
ried ones, a grandfather or two — but nothing 
young and nothing American.” 

“It must have been a great disappointment,” 
said Barry enjoying himself. 

“It would not have mattered if there had 
been a thousand. The Signora Mariotti would 
have seen to it that I met no one. She is a 
very good chaperon, Signor !” 

33 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“I thank her. She has preserved the dew 
on the rose, the flush on the dawn — the wax 
for the record and the — er — niche for the 
statue. I never had my statue done,” said 
Barry gayly, “but if you would care for it, in 
terra cotta, rather small and neat ” 

Confusedly Maria Angelina laughed. 

“And this is your maiden voyage of discov- 
ery !” He was looking down at her as he swept 
her about a corner. “Rash young person! 
Don't you know what happened to your kins- 
man, Our First Discoverer?” 

“But what?” 

“He was loaded with fetters,” said Barry 
solemnly. 

“Fetters? But what fetters could I fear?” 

“Have you never heard,” he demanded of 
her upraised eyes, “of the fetters of matri- 
mony?” 

“Oh, Signor !” Actually the color swept into 
her cheeks and her eyes fled from his, though 
she laughed lightly. “That is a golden fetter.” 

“Sometimes,” said he, dryly, “or gilded.” 

34 


UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 


But Maria Angelina was pursuing his jest. 
“It was not until Columbus returned to his 
Europe that he was fettered. It was not from 
the — the natives that he had such ill-treatment 
to fear.” 

“Now, do you think the — the natives” — 
gayly Barry mimicked her quaint inflection — 
“will let you get away with that ? Or let you 
return? . . .You have a great many discover- 
ies before you, Signorina Santonini!” 

Deftly he circled, smiling down into her up- 
turned face. 

Maria Angelina’s eyes were shining, and the 
smooth oval of her cheeks had deepened from 
poppy pink to poppy rose. She was dancing 
in a dream, a golden dream . . . incredibly, 
ecstatically happy. . . . She was in a confu- 
sion of young delight in which the extrava- 
gance of his words, the light of his glances, the 
thrill of the violins were inextricably involved 
in gayety and glamour. 

And then suddenly the dance was over, and 

35 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


he was returning her to her cousins. And he 
was saying good-by. 

“I have a table yonder — although I appear 
to have forsaken it,” he was explaining. 
“Don’t forget your first American, Signor- 
ina — I’m sorry you are going to-morrow, but 
perhaps I shall be seeing you in the Adiron- 
dacks before very long.” 

He gave Maria Angelina a directly smiling 
glance whose boldness made her shiver. 

Then he turned to Mrs. Blair. “You know 
my uncle had a little shack built on Old Chief 
Mountain — not so far from you at Wilderness. 
I always like to run up there ” 

“Oh, no, you won’t, Barry,” said Mrs. Blair, 
laughing incomprehensibly. “You’ll be run- 
ning where the breaking waves dash high, on a 
stern and rock-bound coast.” 

He met the sally with answering laughter a 
trifle forced. 

“I’m flattered you think me so constant! 
But you underestimate the charms of novelty. 
. . . If I should meet, say, a petite brime, done 
36 


UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 


in cotton wool and dewy with innocence — — ” 

“You’re incorrigible,” vowed the lady. “I 
have no faith in you !” 

“Not even in my incorrigibility?” 

“I’ll believe it when I see you again. . . . 
Love to Leila.” 

He made a mocking grimace at her. 

Then he stooped to clasp Maria Angelina’s 
hand. “A rivederci J Signorina,” he insisted. 
“Don’t you believe a thing she tells you about 
me. . . . I’m a poor, misunderstood young 
man in a world of women. Addio, Signorina — • 
a rivederci ” 

And then he was gone, so gay and brown 
and smiling. 

Sudden anguish swept down upon Maria 
Angelina, like the cold mistral upon the south- 
lands. 

He was gone. . . . Would she really see him 
again? . . . Would he come to those moun- 
tains ? 

But why would he not? He had spoken of 
it, all of himself ... he had that place he 
37 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


called a shack. That was beautiful good for- 
tune — all of a part of the amazing fairy story 
of the New World. . . . And he had looked so 
at her. He had made such jokes. He had 
pressed her hands . . . ever so lightly but 
without mistake. . . . 

And his eyes, that shining brightness of his 
eyes. . . . 

“Why rub it in about York Harbor ?” 

Cousin Jim was speaking and Maria An- 
gelina came out of her dream with sudden, 
painful intensity. Instinctively she divined 
that here was something vital to her hope, and 
while her young face held the schooled, 
unstirred detachment of the jeune fille , her 
senses were straining nervously for any flicker 
of enlightenment. 

“Why not rub it in?” countered Cousin Jane 
briskly. “He’ll go there before long, and he 
might as well know that he isn’t throwing any 
sand in our eyes. . . . This sulking here in 
town is simply to punish her.” 

38 


UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 


“Perhaps he isn’t sulking. Perhaps he 
doesn’t care to run after her any more. He 
may not be as keen about Leila Grey as you 
women think.” 

Maria Angelina’s involuntary glance at 
Mrs. Blair caught the superior assurance of 
her smile. 

“My dear Jim! He was simply mad about 
her. That last leave, before he went to France, 
he only went places to meet her.” 

“Well, he may have got over it. Men do,” 
argued Cousin Jim stubbornly. 

“Yes,” echoed Maria Angelina’s beating 
heart in hope, “men do !” 

Cousin Jane laughed. “Men don’t get over 
Leila Grey — not if Leila Grey wants to keep 
them.” 

“If she wanted so darn much to keep him 
why didn’t she take him then?” 

“I didn’t say she wanted to keep him then ” 
Mrs. Blair’s tones were mysteriously, ironically 
significant. “Leila wasn’t throwing herself 
away on any young officer — with nothing but 
39 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


his insurance. It was Bobby Martin that she 
was after ” 

"Gad! Was she?” Cousin Jim was pa- 
tently struck by this. "Why, Bobby’s just a 
kid and she — - — ” 

"There’s not two years’ difference between 
them — in years . But Leila came out very 
young — and she’s the most thoroughly calcu- 
lating ” 

"Oh, come now, Jane — just because the girl 
didn’t succumb to the impecunious Barry and 

did like the endowed Bobby ! She may 

really have liked him, you know.” 

"Oh, come now, yourself, Jim,” retorted 
his wife good-humoredly. "Just because she 
has blue eyes! No, if Leila really liked any- 
body I always had the notion it was Barry — 
but she wanted Bobby.” 

For a long moment Cousin Jim was silent, 
turning the thing over with his cigar. Maria 
Angelina sat still as a mouse, fearful to breathe 
lest the bewildering revelations cease. Cousin 
40 


UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 


Jane, over her second cup of coffee, had the 
air of a humorous and superior oracle. 

Then Mr. Blair said slowly, “And Bobby 
couldn't see her ?” 

He had an air of asking if Bobby were in- 
deed of adamant and Mrs. Blair hesitated 
imperceptibly over the sweeping negative. 
Equally slowly, “Oh, Bobby liked her, of course 
— she may have turned his head,” she threw 
out, “but I don't believe he ever lost it for a 
moment. And after he met Ruth that summer 
at Plattsburg — * — ” 

The implication floated there, tenuous, iri- 
descent. Even to Maria Angelina's eyes it was 
an arch of promise. 

Ruth was their daughter, the cousin of her 
own age. And the unknown Bobby was some 
one who liked Ruth. And he was some one 
whom this Leila Grey had tried to ensnare — 
although all the time Mrs. Blair suspected her 
of liking more the Signor Barry Elder. 

Hotly Maria Angelina's precipitous intui- 
tions endorsed that supposition. Of course 
4i 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


this Leila liked that Barry Elder. Of course. 
. . . But she had not taken him. He was an 
officer, then — without fortune. Maria An- 
gelina was familiar enough with that story. 
But she had supposed that here, in America, 
where dowries were not exigent and the young 
people were free, there was more romance. 
And now it was not even Leila’s parents who 
had interfered, apparently, but Leila herself. 

What was it Mrs. Blair had said? Thor- 
oughly calculating. . . . Thoroughly calculat- 
ing — and blue eyes. . . . 

Maria Angelina felt a quick little inrush of 
fear. If it should be blue eyes that Americans 
— that is, to say now, that Barry Elder — pre- 
ferred ! 

And then she wondered why, if this Leila 
with the blue eyes had not taken Barry Elder 
before, Cousin Jane now regarded it as a fore- 
gone conclusion between them? Was it be- 
cause she could not get that Signor Bobby 
Martin? Or was Barry Elder more success- 
ful now that he had left the army? 

42 


UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 


She puzzled away at it, like a very still little 
cat at an indestructible mouse, but dared say 
not a word. And while she worried away her 
surface attention was caught by the glance of 
candid humor exchanged between Mr. Blair 
and his wife. 

“Ah, Jane, Jane,” he was saying, in mock 
deprecation, “is that why we are spending the 
summer at Wilderness, not two miles from the 
Martin place ?” 

Mrs. Blair was smiling, but her eyes were 
serious. “I preferred that to having Ruth at a 
house party at the Martins,” she said quietly. 

At that Maria Angelina ceased to attend. 
She would know soon enough about her Cousin 
Ruth and Bobby Martin. But as for Barry 

Elder and Leila Grey ! Had he cared? 

Had she ? . . . Unconsciously her young heart 
repudiated her cousin’s reading of the affair. 
As if Barry Elder would be unsuccessful with 
any woman that he wanted! That was unbe- 
lievable. He had not wanted her — enough. 

He could not want Leila now or he would 


43 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


not have spoken so of coming to the mountains 
to see her — his direct glance had been a prom- 
ise, his eyes a prophecy. 

Dared she believe him? Dared she trust? 
But he was no deceiver, no flirt, like the lady- 
killers who used to come to the Palazzo to bow 
over Lucia's hand and eye each other with that 
half hostile, half knowing swagger. She had 
watched them. . . . But this was America. 

And Barry Elder was — different. 

She was lost to the world about her now. 
Its color and motion and hot counterfeit of life 
beat insensibly upon her; she was aware of it 
only as an imposition, a denial to that some- 
thing within her which wanted to relax into 
quiet and dreaming, which wanted to live over 
and over again the intoxicating excitement, the 
looks, the words. . . . 

She was grateful when Cousin Jane declared 
for an early return. She could hardly wait to 
be alone. 

“What did I tell you?” Jane Blair stopped 
suddenly in their progress to the door and 
44 


UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY 


turned to her husband in low-toned triumph. 
“She’s with him. Leila’s with him.” 

“Huh?” said Cousin Jim unexcitedly. 

“She’s pretended some errand in town — 
she’s come in to get hold of him again,” went 
on Cousin Jane hurriedly, as one who tells the 
story of the act to the unobservant. “She’s 
afraid to leave him alone. . . . And he never 

mentioned her. I wonder ” 

Maria Angelina’s eyes had followed theirs. 
She saw a group about a table, she saw Barry 
Elder’s white-clad shoulders and curly brown 
head. She saw, unregardfully, a man and wo- 
man with him, but all her eagerness, all her 
straining vision was on the young girl with 
him — a girl so blonde, so beautiful that a pang 
went to Maria Angelina’s heart. She learned 
pain in a single throb. 

She heard Cousin Jim quoting oddly in un- 
dertone, “ 'And Beauty drew him, by a single 
hair,’ ” and the words entered her conscious- 
ness hauntingly. 


45 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


If Leila Grey looked like that — why 
then 

Yet he had said that he would come! 

Maria Angelina's first night in America, like 
that last night in Italy, was of sleepless watch- 
ing through the dark. But now there were no 
child's tears at leaving home. There was no 
anxious planning for poor Julietta. Already 
Julietta and Lucia and the Palazzo, even 
Papa and dear, dear Mamma, appeared 
strangely unreal — like a vanished spell — and 
only this night was real and this strange ex- 
pectant stir in her. 

And then she fell asleep and dreamed that 
Barry Elder was advancing to her across the 
long drawing-room of the Palazzo Santonini 
and as she turned to receive him Lucia stepped 
between, saying, “He is for me, instead of 
Paolo Tosti," and behold! Lucia's eyes were as 
blue as the sea and Lucia's hair was as golden 
as amber and her face was the face of the girl 
in the restaurant. 


46 


CHAPTER III 


LUNCHEON AT THE LODGE 

W ILDERNESS LODGE, Cousin 
Jane had said, was a simple little 
place in the mountains, not a hotel 
but rather a club house where only certain 
people could go, and Maria Angelina had pic- 
tured a white stucco pension-hotel set against 
some background like the bare, bright hills of 
Italy. 

She found a green smother of forest, an 
ocean of greenness with emerald crests rising 
higher and higher like giant waves, and at the 
end of the long motor trip the Lodge at last 
disclosed itself as a low, dark, rambling build- 
ing, set in a clearing behind a blue bend of 
sudden river. 

And built of logs! Did people of position 
live yet in logs in America? demanded the 
girl’s secret astonishment as the motor whirled 
47 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


across the rustic bridge and stopped before the 
wide steps of a veranda full of people. 

Springing down the steps, two at a time, 
came a tall, short-skirted girl in white. 

“Dad — you came, too !” she cried. “Oh, 
that’s bully. You must enter the tournament — 
Mother, did you remember about the cup and 
the — you know? What we talked of for the 
booby?” 

She had a loud, gay voice like a boy’s and 
as Maria was drawn into the commotion of 
greetings, she opened wide, half-intimidated 
eyes at the bigness and brownness of this 
Cousin Ruth. 

She had expected Heaven knows what of in- 
credible charm in the girl who had detached 
the Signor Bobby Martin from the siren Leila. 
Her instant wonder was succeeded by a sensa- 
tion of gay relief. After all, these things went 
by chance and favor. . . . And if Bobby Mar- 
tin could prefer this brown young girl to that 
vision at the restaurant why then — then per- 
haps there was also a chance for — what was 
48 


LUNCHEON AT THE LODGE 


it the young Signor Elder had called her? A 
petite brune wrapped in cotton wool. 

These thoughts flashed through her as one 
thought as she followed her three cousins 
across the wide verandas, full of interested 
eyes, into the Lodge and up the stairs to their 
rooms, where Ruth directed the men in placing 
the big trunk and the bags and hospitably ex- 
plained the geography of the suite. 

“My room’s on that side and Dad’s and 
Mother’s is just across — and we all have to 
use this one bath — stupid, isn’t it, but Dad 
is hardly ever here and there’s running water 
in the rooms. You’ll survive, won’t you?” 

Hastily Maria Angelina assured her that 
she would. 

Glimpsing the white-tiled splendors of this 
bath she wondered how Ruth would survive 
the tin tub, set absurdly in a red plush room 
of the Palazzo. . . . 

“Now you know your way about,” the Amer- 
ican girl rattled on, her tone negligent, her 
eyes colored with a little warmer interest as 
49 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


her glance swept her foreign little cousin. 
‘"Frightfully hot, wasn't it? I'll clear out so 
you can pop into the tub. You’ll just have time 
before luncheon," she assured her and was off. 

The next instant, from closed doors beyond, 
her voice rose in unguarded exclamation. 

“Oh, you baby doll! Mother, did you 
ever " 

The voices sank from hearing and Maria 
Angelina was left with the feeling that a baby 
doll was not a desirable being in America. 
This Cousin Ruth intimidated her and her 
breezy indifference and lack of affectionate in- 
terest shot the visitor with the troubled suspi- 
cion that her own presence was entirely super- 
fluous to her cousin's scheme of things. She 
felt more at home with the elders. 

Uncertainly she crossed to her big trunk and 
stood looking down on the bold labels. 

How long since she and Mamma had packed 
it, with dear Julietta smoothing the folds in 
place ! And how far away they all were. . . . 
It was not the old Palazzo now that was un- 
50 


LUNCHEON AT THE LODGE 


real — it was this new, bright world and all the 
strange faces. 

The chintz-decked room with its view of 
alien mountains seemed suddenly remote and 
lonely. 

Her hands shook a little as she unpacked a 
tray of pretty dresses and laid them carefully 
across the bed. . . . Unconsciously she had 
anticipated a warmer welcome from this young 
cousin. . . . She winked away the tears that 
threatened to stain the bright ribbons, and 
stole into the splendor of the white bathroom, 
marveling at its luxurious contrast to the logs 
without. 

The water refreshed her. She felt more 
cheerful, and when she came to a choice of 
frocks, decidedly a new current of interest was 
stealing through life again. 

First impressions were so terribly impor- 
tant ! She wanted to do honor to the Blairs — 
to justify the hopes of Mamma. This was not 
enough of an occasion for the white mull. The 
silks look hot and citified. Hesitantly she se- 
5i 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


lected the apricot organdie with a deeper- 
shaded sash; it was simple for all its glowing 
color, though the short frilled sleeves struck 
her as perhaps too chic. It had been a copy 
of one of Lucia’s frocks, that one bought to 
such advantage of Madame Revenant. 

With it went a golden-strawed hat — but 
Maria Angelina was uncertain about the hat. 

Did you wear one at a hotel — when you 
lived at a hotel? Mamma’s admonitions did 
not cover that. She put the hat on; she took 
the hat off. She rather liked it on — but she 
dropped it on the bed at Ruth’s sudden knock 
and felt a sense of escape for Ruth was hat- 
less. 

And Ruth still .wore the same short white 
skirt and white blouse, open at the throat, in 
which she had greeted them. . . . Was the 
apricot too much then of a toilette? Ruth’s 
eyes were frankly on it; her expression was 
odd. 

But Mrs. Blair had changed. She appeared 
now in blue linen, very smart and trim. 

52 


LUNCHEON AT THE LODGE 


Worriedly Maria Angelina’s dark eyes went 
from one to the other. 

"Is this — is this what I should wear?” she 
asked timidly. "Am I not — as you wish?” 

It would have taken a hard heart to wish her 
otherwise. 

"It’s very pretty,” said Cousin Jane in quick 
reassurance. 

"Too pretty, s’all,” said Cousin Ruth. "But 
it won’t be wasted. . . . Bobby Martin is 
staying to luncheon,” she flung casually at her 
parents. "Has a guest with him. You re- 
member Johnny Byrd.” 

American freedom, indeed! thought Maria 
Angelina following down the slippery stairs 
into the wide hall below where, in a boulder 
fireplace that was surmounted by a stag’s 
head, a small blaze was flickering despite the 
warmth of the day. 

Wasteful, thought Maria Angelina reprov- 
ingly. One could see that the Americans had 
never suffered for fuel. . . . 

53 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


Upon a huge, black fur rug before the fire 
two young men were waiting. 

Demurely Maria thought of the letter she 
would write home that night — one young man 
the first evening in New York, two young men 
the first luncheon at the Lodge. Decidedly, 
America brimmed with young men! 

Meanwhile, Ruth was presenting them. The 
big dark youth, heavy and lazy moving, was 
the Signor Bob Martin. 

The other, Johnny Byrd, was shorter and 
broad of shoulder; he had reddish blonde hair 
slightly parted and brushed straight back; he 
had a short nose with freckles and blue eyes 
with light lashes. When he laughed — and he 
seemed always laughing — he showed splendid 
teeth. 

Both young men stared — but staring was a 
man's prerogative in Italy and Maria Angelina 
was unperturbed. At table she sat serenely, 
her dark lashes shading the oval of her cheeks, 
while the young men's eyes — and one pair of 
them, especially — took in the black, braid- 
54 


LUNCHEON AT THE LODGE 


bound head and the small, Madonna-like face, 
faintly flushed by sun and wind, above the 
golden glow of the sheer frock. 

Then Johnny Byrd leaned across the table 
towards her. 

“I say, Signorina," he began abruptly, 
“what's the Italian for peach?" and as Maria 
Angelina looked up and started very innocently 
to explain, he leaned back and burst into a 
shout of amusement in which the others more 
moderately joined. 

“Don't let him get you," was Ruth's unin- 
telligible advice, and Bobby Martin turned to 
his friend to admonish, “Now, Johnny, don't 
start anything. . . . Johnny's such a good little 
starter!" 

“And a poor finisher," added Ruth smartly 
and both young men laughed again as at a very 
good joke. 

“A starter — but not a beginner, eh?" 
chuckled Cousin Jim, and Mrs. Blair smiled at 
both young men even as she protested, “This 
is the noisiest table in the room!" 

55 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


It was a noisy table. Maria Angelina was 
astounded at the hilarity of that meal. Al- 
ready she began censoring her report to Mam- 
ma. Certainly Mamma would never under- 
stand Ruth's elbows on the table, her shouts 
of laughter — or the pellets of bread she flipped. 

And the words they used ! Maria could only 
feel that the language of Mamma must be sin- 
gularly antiquated. So much she did not un- 
derstand . . . had never heard. . . . What, 
indeed, was a simp, a boob, a nut? What a 
poor fish? . . . She held her peace, and list- 
ened, confused by the astounding vocabulary 
and the even more astounding intimacy. What 
things they said to each other in jest ! 

And whatever Maria Angelina said they 
took in jest. She evoked an appreciative peal 
when she ventured that the Lodge must be 
very old because she had read that the first 
settlers made their homes of logs. 

‘Til take you up and show you our ancestral 
hut," declared Bob Martin. “Where Grand- 
dad used to stretch the Red Skins to dry by the 

56 


LUNCHEON AT THE LODGE 


back door — before tanning ’em for raincoats.” 

“Really?” said Maria Angelina ingenuously, 
then at sight of his expression, “But how shall 
I know what you tell me is true or not?” she 
appealed. “It all sounds so strange to me — 
the truth as well.” 

“You look at me ” said Johnny Byrd leaning 
forward. “When I shut this eye, so, you shake 
your head at them. When I nod — you can be- 
lieve.” 

“But you will not always be there ” 

“I’ll say you’re wrong,” he retorted. “I’m 
going to be there so usually, like the weather — 
did you say you wanted me to stay a month, 
Bob?” 

Color stole into the young girl’s cheeks even 
while she laughed with them. She was con- 
scious of a faint and confused half-distress 
beneath her mounting confidence. They were 
so very jocular. . . . 

Of course this was but chaff, she under- 
stood, and she began to wonder if that other, 
that young Signor Elder, had been but joking. 
57 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


It might be the American way. . . . And 
yet this was all flattering chaff and so perhaps 
she could trust the flattery of her secret 
hope. 

Surely, surely, it was all going to happen. 
He would come — she would see him again. 

Meanwhile she shook her young braids at 
Johnny Byrd. 

“But you are so sudden! I think he is a 
flirter, yes?” she said gayly to Mr. Blair who 
smiled back appreciatively and a trifle protect- 
ively at her. 

But Bobby Martin drawled, “Oh, no, he’s 
not. He’s too careful,” and more laughter en- 
sued. 

After luncheon they went back into the hall 
where the three men drifted out into a side 
room where cigars and cigarettes were sold, 
and began filling their cases, while Mrs. Blair 
stepped out on the verandas and joined a group 
there. Ruth remained by the fireplace, and 
Maria Angelina waited by her. 

“Your friends are very nice,” she began 

58 


LUNCHEON AT THE LODGE 


with a certain diffidence, as her cousin had 
nothing to say. “That Johnny Byrd — he is 
very funny ” 

“Oh, Johnny's funny,” said Ruth in an odd 
voice. She added, “Regular spoiled baby — had 
everything his way. Only an old guardian to 
boss him.” 

“You mean he is an orphan?” 

“Completely.” 

Maria Angelina did not smile. “But that is 
very sad,” she said soberly. “No home 
life ” 

“Don't get it into your head that Johnny 
Byrd wants any home life,” said her cousin 
dryly, and with a hint of hard warning in her 
negligent voice. “He's been dodging home life 
ever since he wore long trousers.” 

“He must then,” Maria Angelina deduced, 
very simply, “be rich.” 

“He's one of the Long Island Byrds.” 

It sounded to Maria like a flock of ducks, but 
she perceived that it was given for affirmation. 
She followed Ruth's glance to where the backs 
59 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


of the young men’s heads were visible, bending 
over some coins they were apparently match- 
ing. . . . Johnny Byrd’s head was flaming in 
the sunshine. . . . 

“He’s a bird from a hard-boiled egg,” Ruth 
said with a smile of inner amusement. 

But whatever cryptic signal she flashed 
slipped unseen from Maria Angelina’s vision. 
Johnny Byrd was nice, but it was a gay, cheery, 
everyday sort of niceness, she thought, with 
none of the quicksilver charm of the young 
man at the dinner dance. . . . And she was 
unimpressed by Johnny’s money. She took 
the millionaires in America as for granted as 
fish in the sea. 

She merely felt cheerfully that Fate was gal- 
loping along the expected course. 

Subconsciously, perhaps, she recorded a pos- 
sible second string to her bow. 

With tact, she thought, she turned the talk 
to Ruth’s young man. 

“And the Signor Bob Martin — I suppose he, 
60 


LUNCHEON AT THE LODGE 


too, is a millionaire,” she smiled, and was as- 
tonished at Ruth’s derisive laugh. 

“Not unless he murders his father/’ said 
that barbaric young woman. 

She added, relenting towards her cousin’s 
ignorance, “Oh, Bob hasn’t anything of his 
own, you know. . . . But his father’s taking 
him into business this fall.” 

Maria Angelina was bewildered. Distinctly 
she had understood, from the Leila Grey con- 
versation, that Bobby Martin was a very eli- 
gible young man and yet here was her cousin 
flouting any financial congratulation. 

Hesitantly, “Is his father — in a good busi- 
ness?” she offered, and won from Ruth more 
merriment as inexplicable as her speech. 

“He’s in Steel,” she murmured, which was 
no enlightenment to Maria. 

She ventured to more familiar ground. 

“He is very handsome.” 

To her astonishment Ruth snorted. . . . 
Now Lucia always bridled consciously when 
one praised Paolo Tosti. 

61 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“Don’t let him hear you say so,” she scoffed. 
“He’s too fat. He needs a lot more tennis.” 

And then to Maria’s horror she raised her 
voice and confided this conviction to the ap- 
proaching young men. 

“You’re getting fat, Bob. I just got your 
profile — and you need a lot of tennis for that 
tummy !” 

And young Martin laughed — the indolent, 
submissive laughter with which he appeared to 
accept all things at the hands of this audacious, 
brown-cheeked, gray-eyed young girl. 

She must be very sure of him, thought the 
little Italian sagely. Then, not so sagely, she 
wondered if Ruth was exhibiting her power to 
warn off all newcomers. . . .Was that why 
she refused to admit his wealth or his good 
looks — she wanted to invite no competition? 

Maria Angelina believed she saw the light. 

She would reassure Ruth, she thought 
eagerly. She was a young person of honor. 
Never would she attempt to divert a glance 
from her cousin’s admirer. 

62 


LUNCHEON AT THE LODGE 


Meanwhile a debate was carried on between 
golf and tennis, and was carried in favor of 
golf by Cousin Jim. There was unintelligible 
talk of hazards and bunkers and handicaps for 
the tournament, of records and of bogey, and 
then as Johnny turned to her with a casual, 
“Like the game?” a shadow of misgiving crept 
into her confidence. 

She could not golf. Nor could she play 
tennis. Nor could she follow the golfers — as 
Johnny Byrd suggested — for Cousin Jane de- 
clared her frock and slippers too delicate. She 
must get into something more appropriate. 

And in Maria Angelina the worried suspi- 
cion woke that she had nothing more appro- 
priate. 

A few minutes later Cousin Jane confirmed 
that suspicion as she paused by the trunk the 
young girl was hastily unpacking. 

“I’ll send to town for some plain little things 
for you to play in,” she said cheerfully. “You 
must have some low-heeled white shoes and 
short white skirts and a batting hat. They 

63 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


won't come to much," she added as if care- 
lessly, going down to her bridge game on the 
veranda. 

But Maria Angelina's small hands clenched 
tightly at her sides in a panic out of all pro- 
portion to the idea. 

More expense, she was thinking quiveringly. 
More investment! 

Oh, she must not fail — she dared not fail. 
She must find some one — the right some 
one 

She dropped beside her trunk of pretty 
things in a passion of frightened tears. 

But the night swung her back to triumph 
again. 

For although she could not golf, and her 
hands could not wield a tennis racket, Maria 
Angelina could play a guitar and she could 
sing to it like the angels she had been named 
for. And the young people at the Lodge had 
a way of gathering in the dark upon the wide 
steps and strumming chords and warbling 

64 


LUNCHEON AT THE LODGE 


strange strains about intimate emotions. And 
as Maria Angelina’s voice rose with the rest 
her gift was discovered. 

“Gosh, the little Wop’s a GalH-Curci,” was 
John Byrd’s aside to Bob. 

So presently with Johnny Byrd’s guitar in 
her hands Maria Angelina was singing the 
songs of Italy, sometimes in English, when she 
knew the words, that all might join in the 
choruses, but more often in their own Italian. 

A crescent moon edged over the shadowy 
dark of the mountains before her . . . the 
same moon whose silver thread of light slipped 
down those far Apennine hills of home and 
touched the dome of old Saint Peter’s. She 
felt far away and lonely . . . and deliciously 
sad and subtly expectant. . . . 

“ ’O Sole mio ” 

And as she sang, with her eyes on the far 
hills, her ears caught the whir of wheels on the 
road below, and all her nerves tightened like 
wires and hummed with the charged currents. 

Out of the dark she conjured a tall young 

65 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURES? 


figure advancing ... a figure topped by short- 
cut curly brown hair ... a figure with eyes of 
incredible brightness. . . . 

If he would only come now and find her like 
this, singing. . . . 

It was so exquisite a hope that her heart 
pleaded for it. 

But the wheels went on. 

“But he will come,” she thought swiftly, to 
cover the pang of that expiring hope. “He 
will come soon. He said so. And perhaps 
again it will be like this and he will find me 
here 

“ ’O Sole mio ” 

And only Johnny Byrd, staring steadily 
through the dusk, discerned that there were 
tears in her eyes. 


CHAPTER IV 


RI-RI SINGS AGAIN 

S HE told herself that she was foolish to 
hope for him so soon. Of course he 
could not follow at once. He could not 
leave New York. He had work to be done. 
She must not begin to hope until the week-end 
at least. 

But though she talked to herself so wisely, 
she hoped with every breath she drew. She 
was accustomed to Italian precipitancy — and 
nothing in Barry Elder suggested delay. If he 
came, he would come while his memory of her 
was fresh. 

It would be either here or York Harbor. 
Either herself or that girl with the blue eyes. 
If he really wanted to see her at all, if he had 
any memory of their dance, any interest in the 
newness of her, then he would come soon. 

67 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


And so through Maria Angelina’s days ran 
a fever of expectancy. 

At first it ran high. The honk of a motor 
horn, the reverberation of wheels upon the 
bridge, the slam of a door and the flurry of 
steps in the hall set up that instant, tumultuous 
commotion. 

At any moment, she felt, Barry Elder might 
arrive. Every morning her pulses confessed 
that he might come that day; every night her 
courage insisted that the next morning would 
bring him. 

And as the days passed the expectancy in- 
creased. It grew acute. It grew painful. The 
feeling, at every arrival, that he might be there 
gave her a tight pinch of suspense, a ham- 
mering racket of pulse-beats — succeeded by an 
empty, sickening, sliding-down-to-nothingness 
sensation when she realized that he was not 
there, when her despair proclaimed that he 
would never be there — and then, stoutly, she 
told herself that he would come the next time. 

They were days of dreams for her — dreams 

68 


RI-RI SINGS AGAIN 


of the restaurant, of color, light and music, 
of that tall, slim figure . . . dreams of the 
dance, of the gay, half-teasing voice, the 
bright eyes, the direct smile. . . . Every word 
he had uttered became precious, infinitely sig- 
nificant. 

“A rivederci, Signorina. . . . Don’t forget 
me.” 

She had not forgotten him. Like the wax 
he had named she had guarded his image. 
Through all the swiftly developing experiences 
of those strange days she retained that first 
vivid impression. 

She saw him in every group. She pictured 
him in every excursion. Above Johnny Byrd’s 
light, straight hair she saw those close-cropped 
brown curls. . . . She held long conversations 
with him. She confided her impressions. She 
read him Italian poems. 

But still he did not come. 

And sharply she went from hope to despair. 
She told herself that he would never come. 

She did not believe herself. Beneath a set 

69 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


little pretense of indifference she listened in- 
tently for the sound of arrivals; her heart 
turned over at an approaching car. 

But she did not admit it. She said that she 
was through with hope. She said that she did 
not care whether he came or not. She said 
she did not want him to come. 

He was with Leila Grey, of course. 

Well — she was with Johnny Byrd. 

She was with him every day, for with that 
amazing American freedom, Bobby Martin 
came down to see Ruth every day and the four 
young people with other couples from the 
Lodge were always involved in some game, 
some drive, some expedition. 

But it was not accident nor a lazy concur- 
rence with propinquity that kept Johnny Byrd 
at Maria Angelina’s side. 

Openly he announced himself as tied hand 
and foot. His admiration was as vivid as his 
red roadster. It was as unabashed and cla- 
mant as his motor horn. He reveled in her. 
70 


RI-RI SINGS AGAIN 


He monopolized her. In his own words, he 
lapped her up. 

With amazing simplicity Maria Angelina ac- 
cepted this miracle. It was only a second-rate 
miracle to her, for it was not the desire of 
her heart, and she was uneasy about it. She 
did not want to be involved with Johnny Byrd 
if Barry Elder should arrive. ... Of course, 
if she had never met Barry Elder. . . . 

Johnny Byrd was a very nice, merry boy.' 
And he was rich . . . independent. . . . If one 
has never tasted Asti Spumante, then one can 
easily be pleased with Chianti. 

Her secret dream was the young girl’s pro- 
tection against over-eagerness. 

To her young hostess this indifference came 
as an enormous relief. 

“She’s all right,” Ruth reported to her 
mother, upon an afternoon that Maria An- 
gelina had taken herself downstairs to the 
piano and to a prospective call from Johnny 
Byrd while Ruth herself, in riding togs, 
awaited Bob Martin and his horses. 

7i 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“She isn't jumping down Johnny's throat at 
all,” the girl went on. “I was afraid, that 
first day, when she asked such nutty questions. 
. . . But she seems to take it all for granted. 
That ought to hold Johnny for a while — long 
enough so he won't get tired and throw her 
down for somebody else before he goes.” 

“You think, then, there isn't a chance 
of ?” 

Mrs. Blair left the hypothesis in midair, 
convicted of ancient sentiment by the frank 
amusement of her young daughter's look. 

“No, my dear, there isn't a chance of,” Ruth 
so competently informed her that Mrs. Blair, 
in revolt, was moved to murmur, “After all, 
Ruth, people do fall in love and get married 
in this world.” 

“Oh, yes.” 

Patiently Ruth gave this thought her con- 
sideration and in fair-mindedness turned her 
scrutiny upon past days to evoke some sign that 
should contradict her own conclusions. 

“She’s got something — it's something dif- 
72 


RI-RI SINGS AGAIN 


ferent from the rest of us — but it would take 
more than that to do for Johnny Byrd.” 

Definitely, Ruth shook her head. 

“You don't suppose she's beginning to 
think ?'' hazarded Mrs. Blair. 

Better than her daughter, she envisaged the 
circumstances which might have led, in her 
Cousin Lucy's mind, to this young girl's visit. 
Lucy, herself, had been taken abroad in those 
early days by a competent aunt. Now Lucy, 
in the turn of the tide, was sending her 
daughter to America. 

Jane Blair would have liked to play fairy 
godmother, to make a benevolent gesture, to 
scatter largess. . . . 

But she was not going to have it said that 
she was a fortune hunter. She was not going 
to alarm Johnny Byrd and implicate Bob Mar- 
tin and disturb the delicate balance between 
him and Ruth. 

Lucy's daughter must take her chances. 
This wasn't Europe. 

“Well, I've said enough to her,” Ruth stated 

73 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


briskly, in answer to her mother’s supposition. 
“I don’t know how much she believes. . . . 
You know Ri-Ri is seething with Old World 
sentiment and she may be such a little nut as to 
think — but she doesn’t act as if she really cared 
about it. It isn’t just a pose. . . . Do you 
imagine,” said Ruth, suddenly lapsing into a 
little Old World sentiment herself, “that she’s 
gone on some one in Italy and they sent her 
over to forget him? That might account ” 

“Lucy’s letter didn’t sound like it. She was 
very emphatic about Maria Angelina’s know- 
ing nothing of the world or young men. I 
rather gathered,” Mrs. Blair made out, “that 
the family had a plain daughter to marry off 
and wanted the pretty one in ambush for a 
while — they take care of those things, you 
know.” 

“And I suppose if she copped a millionaire 
in the ambush they wouldn’t howl bloody mur- 
der,” said the girl, with admirable intuition. 

“Oh, well — — ” She yawned and looked out 
of the window. “She’s probably having the 
74 


RI-RI SINGS AGAIN 


time of her life. . . . I'm grateful she turned 
out such a little peach. . . . When she goes 
back and marries some fat spaghetti it will 
give her something to moon about to remember 
how she and Johnny Byrd used to sit out and 
strum to the stars There he is now.” 

“Bob?” said Mrs. Blair absently, her mind 
occupied by her young daughter's large sophis- 
tication. 

“Johnny,” said Ruth. 

She leaned half out the window as the red 
roadster shot thunderously across the rustic 
bridge and brought up sharply on the drive- 
way below. With a shouted greeting she 
brought the driver's red-blonde head to atten- 
tion. 

“Hullo — where's the Bob?” 

Johnny grinned. “Trying to ride one horse 
and lead another. Sweet mount he's bringing 
you, Ruth. Didn't like the way I passed him. 
Bet you he throws you.” 

“Bet you he doesn't.” 

“You lose. . . . Where’s the little Wop?” 

75 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“You mean Maria Angelina Santonini?” 

“Gosh, is that all? Well, you scoot across 
to her room and tell Maria Angelina Santonini 
that she has a perfectly good date with me.” 

“She powdered her nose and went down 
stairs an hour ago,” Ruth sang down, just as a 
small figure emerged from the music room upon 
the veranda and approached the rail. 

“The little Wop is here, Signor,” said Maria 
Angelina lightly. 

Unabashed Johnny Byrd beamed at her. It 
was a perfectly good sensation, each time, to 
see her. One grew to suspect, between times, 
that anything so enchanting didn’t really ex- 
ist — and then, suddenly, there she was, like a 
conjurer’s trick, every lovely young line of 
her. 

Johnny knew girls. He knew them, he 
would have informed you, backwards and for- 
wards. And he liked girls — devilish cunning 
games, with the same old trumps up their 
sleeves — when they wore ’em — but this girl 
76 


RI-RI SINGS AGAIN 


was just puzzlingly different enough to evoke 
a curiously haunting wonder. 

Was it the difference in environment? Or 
in herself? He couldn't quite make her out. 

He seemed to be groping for some clew, 
some familiar sign that would resolve all the 
unfamiliarities to old acquaintance. 

Meanwhile he continued to smile cheerily at 
the young person he had so rudely designated 
as a little Wop and gestured to the seat beside 
him. 

“Hop in,” he admonished. “Let us be off 
before that horse comes and steps on me. 
That's a dear girl.” 

But Maria Angelina shook her dark head. 

“I told you, no, Signor, I could not go. In 
my country one does not ride with young men.” 

“But you are in my country now. And in 
my country one jolly well rides with young 
men.” 

“In your country — but for a time, yes.” 
Unconvinced Maria Angelina stood by her 
rail, like the boy upon the burning deck. 

77 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“But your aunt — cousin, I mean — would let 
you,” he argued. “I'll shout up now and 


Unrelentingly, “It is not my cousin, but my, 
mother who would object,” she informed him. 

“Holy Saint Cecilia! You’re worse than 
boarding school. Come on, Maria Angelina — 
I’ll promise not to kiss you.” 

That was one of Johnny’s best lines. It al- 
ways had a deal of effect — one way or another. 
It startled Maria Angelina. Her eyes opened 
as if he had set off a rocket — and something 
very bright and light, like the impish reflections 
of that rocket, danced a moment in her look. 

“I will write that promise to my mother and 
see if it persuades her,” she informed him. 

“Oh, all right, all right.” 

With the sigh of the defeated Johnny Byrd 
turned off the gas and climbed out of his car. 

“Just for that the promise is off,” he an- 
nounced. “Do you think your mother would 
mind letting you sit in the same room with me 
and teach me that song you promised?” 

78 


RI-RI SINGS AGAIN 


“She would mind very much in Italy.” Over 
her shoulder Maria cast a laughing look at him 
as she stepped back into the music room. 
“There I would never be alone like this.” 

Incredulously Johnny stared past her into 
the music room. Through the windows upon 
the other side came the voices of bridge players 
upon the veranda without. Through those 
same windows were visible the bridge players’ 
heads. Other windows opened upon the ver- 
anda in the front of the Lodge from which 
they had just come. An arch of doorway gave 
upon the wide hall where a guest was shuffling 
the mail. 

“Alone!” ejaculated Johnny. 

“My mother allows this when my sister 
Lucia and her fiance, Paolo Tosti, are to- 
gether,” said Maria Angelina. “I am in the 
next room with a book. And that is very ad- 
vanced. It is because Mamma is American.” 

“I’ll say it’s advanced,” Johnny muttered. 
“You mean — you mean your sister and that — 
79 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


that toasted one she’s engaged to have never 
really seen each other ?” 

“Oh, they have seen each other ” 

“The poor fish,” said Johnny heavily. He 
glanced with increasing curiosity at the young 
girl by his side. . . . After all, this jeune fille 
thing might be true. . . . 

“Well, I’m glad your mother was American,” 
he declared, beginning to strum upon the piano 
and inviting her to a seat beside him. 

But Maria Angelina remained looking 
through her music. 

“Then I am only half a Wop,” said she. 
She added, bright mischief between her long 
lashes, “What is it then — a Wop?” 

Johnny Byrd, striking random chords, 
looked up at her. 

“What is it?” he repeated. “I’ll say that 
depends. . . . Sometimes it’s dark and greasy 
and throws bombs. . . . Sometimes it’s bad 
and glad and sings Carmen. . . . And some- 
times it’s — it’s ” 

Deliberately he stared at the small braid- 
80 


RI-RI SINGS AGAIN 


bound head, the shadowy dark of the eyes, the 
scarlet curve of the small mouth. 

“Sometimes it’s just the prettiest, young- 
est ” 

“I am not so young,” said Maria Angelina 
indignantly. 

“Lordy, you’re a babe in arms.” 

“I am not/' Her defiance was furious. It 
had a twinge of terror — terror lest they treat 
her everlastingly as child. 

“I am eighteen. I am but a year and three 
months younger than Ruth.” 

“She’s a kid,” grinned Johnny. 

“The Signor Bob Martin does not think so!” 

“The Signor Bob Martin is nuts on that par- 
ticular kid. And he’s a kid himself.” 

“And do you think that you are ?” 

“Sure. We’re all kids together. Why not? 
I like it,” declared young Byrd. 

But Maria Angelina was not appeased. She 
had half glimpsed that indefinite irresponsi- 
bility of these strangers which treated youth 
as a toy, an experiment. . . . 

81 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“And is the Signorina Leila Grey,” said she 
suddenly, “is she, also, a kid?” 

Roundly Johnny opened his eyes. His face 
presented a curious stolidity of look, as if a 
protection against some unforeseen attack. 
At the same time it was streaked with 
humor. 

“Now where,” said he, “did you get that?” 

“Is she,” the girl persisted, “is she also a 
kid?” 

“The Signorina Leila Grey? No,” conceded 
Johnny, “the Signorina Leila Grey was born 
with her wisdom teeth cut. ... At that she 
hasn’t found so much to chew on,” he mur- 
mured cheerily. 

The girl’s eyes were bright with divinations. 
“You mean that she did not — did not find 
your friend Bob something to chew upon?” 

Johnny’s laugh was a guffaw. It rang start- 
lingly in that quiet room. “You’re there, Ri- 
Ri — absolutely there,” he vowed. “But where, 

I wonder ” He broke off. His look held 

both surmise and a shrewd suspicion. 

8 2 


RI-RI SINGS AGAIN 


“I — guessed,” said Maria Angelina hastily. 
“And I saw her the first evening in New York. 

. . . She is very beautiful.” 

“She’s a wonder,” he admitted heartily. 
“Yes — and I’ll say Bob nearly fell for her. If 
she’d been expert enough she could have gath- 
ered him in. He just dodged in time — and 
now he’s busy forgetting he ever knew 
her.” 

“Perhaps,” slowly puzzled out Maria An- 
gelina, “perhaps the reason that she was not — 
not expert, as you say — was because her atten- 
tion was just a little — wandering.” 

Johnny yawned. “Often happens.” He 
struck a few chords. “Where’s that little song 
of yours — the one you were going to teach 
me? I could do something with that at the 
next show at the club.” 

“If you will let me sit down, Signor ” 

“I’m not crabbing the bench.” 

“But I wish the place in the center.” 

“What you ’fraid of, Ri-Ri?” Obligingly 
Johnny moved over. “Why, you have me tied 
83 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


hand and foot. I’m afraid to move a muscle 
for fear you’ll tell me it isn’t done — in Italy.” 

But Ri-Ri gave this an absent smile. For 
long, now, she had been leading up to this talk 
and she felt herself upon the brink of revela- 
tions. . . . Perhaps this Johnny Byrd knew 
where Barry Elder was. Perhaps they were 
friends. . . . 

“In New York,” she told him, “that Leila 
Grey was at the restaurant with a young man 
— with the Signor Barry Elder.” 

“Huh? Barry Elder?” 

“Are you,” — she was proud of the splendid 
indifference of her voice, — “are you a friend 
of his?” 

Uninterestedly, “Oh, I know Barry,” Johnny 
told her. “Bright boy — Barry. Awful high- 
brow, though. Wrote a play or something. 
Not a darn bed in it. Oh, well,” said Johnny 
hastily, with a glance at the girl’s young face, 
“I say, how does this go? Ta tump ti turn ti 
tump tump — what do those words of yours 
mean?” 


84 


RI-RI SINGS AGAIN 


“Perhaps this Barry Elder,” said Ri-Ri with 
averted eyes, her hands fluttering the pages, 
“perhaps he is the one that Leila Grey's at- 
tention was upon. Did you not hear that?” 

“Who? Barry?” 

“Has he not,” said the girl desperately, “be- 
come recently more desirable to her — more 
rich, perhaps ” 

“That play didn't make him anything, that's 
sure,” the young man meditated. “But seems 
to me I did hear — something about an uncle 
shuffling off and leaving him a few thous. . . . 
Maybe he left enough to buy Leila a sup- 
per.” 

“Here are the English words.” Maria An- 
gelina spread the music open before them. 
“Mrs. Blair was joking with him,” she re- 
verted, “because he was not going to that York 
Harbor this summer where this Leila Grey 
was. But perhaps he has gone, after all?” 

“Search me,” said Johnny negligently. “I'm 
not his keeper.” 

“But you would know if he is coming to 

85 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


the dance at the Martins — that dance next 
week ?" 

“He isn't coming to the house party, he's not 
invited. He and Bob aren't anything chummy 
at all. Barry trains in an older crowd. . . . 
Seems to me," said Johnny, turning to look at 
her out of bright blue eyes, “you're awf'ly in- 
terested in this Barry Elder thing. Did you 
say you met him in New York?" 

“I met him — yes," said Maria Angelina, in 
a steady little voice, beginning suddenly to 
play. “And I thought it was so romantic — 
about him and this Leila Grey. She was so 
beautiful and he had been so brave in the war. 
And so I wondered " 

“Well, don't you wonder about who's com- 
ing to that dance. That dance is mine ” said 
Johnny definitely. “I want you to look your 
darndest — put it all over those flappers. 
Show them what you got," admonished 
Johnny with the simple directness in such 
vogue. 


86 


RI-RI SINGS AGAIN 


“And now come on, Ri-Ri — let's get into this 
together. 

‘I cannot now forget you 
And you think not of me!’ 

Come on, Maria Angelina!" 

And Maria Angelina, her face lifted, her 
eyes strangely bright, sang, while Johnny 
Byrd stared fixedly down at her, angrily, de- 
fiantly, sang to that unseen young man — 
back in the shadows 

“I cannot now forget you 
And you think not of me !” 

And then she told herself that she would 
forget him very well indeed. 


CHAPTER V 


BETWEEN DANCES 

T HERE had been distinct proprietor- 
ship in Johnny’s reference to the 
dance, a hint of possessive admoni- 
tion, a shade of anxiety to which Maria An- 
gelina was not insensitive. 

He wanted her to excel. His pride was call- 
ing, unconsciously, upon her, to justify his 
choice. The dance was an exhibition . . . 
competition. It was the open market . . . 
appraisal. . . . 

No matter how charming she might be in 
the motor rides with the four, how pretty and 
piquant in the afternoon at the piano, how 
melodious in the evenings upon the steps, the 
full measure of his admiration was not ex- 
acted. 


88 


BETWEEN DANCES 


Sagely she surmised this. Anxiously she 
awaited the event. 

It was her first real dance. It was her first 
American affair. Casually, in the evenings at 
the Lodge, they had danced to the phonograph 
and she had been initiated into new steps and 
amazed at the manner of them, but there had ' 
been nothing of the slightest formality. 

Now the Martins were entertaining over 
the week-end, and giving a dance to which the 
neighborhood — meaning the neighborhood of 
the Martins' acquaintance — was assembling. 

And again Maria Angelina felt the inrush 
of fear, the overwhelming timidity of inexpe- 
rience held at bay by pride alone . . . again 
she knew the tormenting question which she 
had confronted in that dim old glass at the 
Palazzo Santonini on the day when she had 
heard of the adventure before her. 

She asked it that night of a different glass, 
the big, built-in mirror of the dressing-room at 
the Martins given over to the ladies — a mirror 
that was a dissolving kaleidoscope of color and 
89 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


motion, of bright silks, bare shoulders and 
white arms, of pink cheeks, red lips and shin- 
ing hair. 

Advancing shyly among the young girls, filled 
with divided wonder at their self-possession 
and their extreme decolletage, Ri-Ri gazed at 
the glass timidly, determinedly, fatefully, as 
one approaches an oracle, and out from the 
glittering surface was flung back to her a ra- 
diant image of reassurance — a vision of a slim 
figure in filmiest white, slender arms and 
shoulders bare, dark hair not braided now, but 
piled high upon her head — a revelation of a 
nape of neck as young and kissable as a baby's 
and yet an addition of bewildering years to her 
immaturity. 

To-night she was glad of the white skin, that 
was a gift from Mamma. The white coral 
string, against the satin softness of her throat, 
revealed its opalescent flush. She was immac- 
ulate, exquisite, like some figurine of fancy — 
an image of youth as sweet and innocently 
troubling as a May night. 

90 


BETWEEN DANCES 


“You’re a love/’ said Ruth heartily, appear- 
ing at her side, very stunning herself in jade 
green, with her smooth hair a miracle of shin- 
ing perfection. 

“And you’re — different,” added Ruth in a 
slightly puzzled voice, looking her small cousin 
over with the thoroughness of an inventory. 
“It must be the hair, Ri-Ri. . . . You’ve lost 
that little Saint Susy air.” 

“But there is no Saint Susy,” Ri-Ri inter- 
posed gayly, lightly fingering the dark curves 
of her hair. 

Truly — for Johnny — she had done her 
darndest! Surely he would be pleased. 

“If you’d only let me cut that lower — you’re 
simply swaddled in tulle ” 

Startled, Maria glanced down at the hol- 
lows of her young bosom, at the scantiness of 
her bodice suspended only by bands of sheerest 
gauze. She wondered what Mamma would 
say, if she could see her so, without that drape 
of net. . . . 


9 * 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“You have the duckiest shoulder blades,” 
said Ruth. 

“Oh — do they show?” cried Maria Angelina 
in dismay. She twisted for a view and the 
movement drew Ruth’s glance along her lithe 
figure. 

“We ought to have cut two inches more off,” 
she declared, and now Ri-Ri’s glance fled down 
to the satin slippers with their crossed ribbons, 
to the narrow, silken ankles, to the slender legs 
above the ankles. It seemed to her an utterly 
limitless exhibition. And Ruth was proposing 
two more inches ! 

Apprehensively she glanced about to make 
sure that no scissors were in prospect. 

“But you’ll do,” Ruth pronounced, and in re- 
lief Maria Angelina relinquished the center of 
the mirror, and slipped out into the gallery that 
ran around three sides of the house. 

It was built like a chalet, but Maria Angelina 
had seen no such chalet in her childish sum- 
mers in Switzerland. Over the edge of the rail 
she gazed into the huge hall, cleared now for 
92 


BETWEEN DANCES 


dancing. The furniture had been pushed back 
beneath the gallery where it was arranged in 
intimate little groups for future tete-a-tetes, 
except a few lounging chairs left on the black 
bear-skins by the chimney-piece. In one cor- 
ner a screen of pine boughs and daisies shut 
off the musicians from the streets, and in the 
opposite corner an English man-servant was 
presiding over a huge silver punch bowl. 

To Maria Angelina, accustomed to Italian 
interiors, the note was buoyantly informal. 
And the luxury of service in this informality 
was a piquant contrast. ... No one seemed to 
care what anything cost. . . . They gave 
dances in a log chalet and sent to New York 
for the favors and to California for the fruit. 
. . . Into the huge punch-bowl they poured 
wine of a value now incredible, since the supply 
could never be replenished. . . . 

Very different would be Lucia's wedding 
party in the Palazzo Santonini, on that mar- 
velous old service that Pietro polished but three 
93 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


times a year, with every morsel of refreshment 
arranged and calculated beforehand. 

What miracles of economy would be per- 
formed in that stone-flagged kitchen, many of 
them by Mamma’s own hands ! Suddenly 
Maria Angelina found a moment to wonder 
afresh at that mother . . . and with a new 
vision. . . . For Mamma had come from this 
profusion. 

“They have a regular place at Newport.” 
Ruth was concluding some unheard speech be- 
hind her. “But they like this better. . . . This 
is the life,” and with a just faintly discernible 
note of proprietorship in her air she was off 
down the stairs. 

“Didn’t they find Newport rather chilly?” 
murmured the girl to whom she had been talk- 
ing. “Wasn’t Mrs. M. a Smith or a Brown- 
Jones or something ?” 

“It was something in butterine,” said an- 
other guest negligently and swore, softly and 
intensely, at a shoulder strap. “Oh, damn the 
94 


BETWEEN DANCES 


thing! . . . Well — flop if you want to. I’ve 
got nothing to hide. ,, 

“You know why girls hide their ears, don’t 
you ?” said the other voice, and the second girl 
flung wearily back, “Oh, so they can have 
something to show their husbands — I heard 
that in my cradle !” 

“It is rather old,” its sponsor acknowledged 
wittily, and the pair went clattering on. 

Had America, Maria Angelina wondered, 
been like this in her mother’s youth? Was it 
from such speeches that her mother had 
turned, in helplessness or distaste, to the deli- 
cate implications, the finished innuendo of the 
Italian world? 

Or had times changed? Were these girls 
truly different from their mothers? Was it a 
new society? 

That was it, she concluded, and she, in her 
old-world seclusion, was of another era from 
these assured ones. . . . Again, for a moment 
the doubt of her capacity to cope with these 
times assailed her, but only for a moment, for 
95 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


next instant she caught Johnny Byrd’s up- 
turned glance from the floor below and in its 
flash of admiration, as unstinted as a sun bath, 
her confidence drew reanimation. 

Later, she found that same warmth in other 
men’s eyes and in the eagerness with which 
they kept cutting in. 

That cutting in, itself, was strange to her. 
It filled her with a terrifying perspective of 
what would happen if she were not cut in upon 
— if she were left to gyrate endlessly in the 
arms of some luckless one, eternally stuck. . . . 

At home, at a ball, she knew that there were 
fixed dances, and programs, in which engage- 
ments were jotted definitely down, and at each 
dance’s end a girl was returned respectfully to 
her chaperon where the next partner called 
for her. Often she had scanned Lucia’s 
scrawled programs for the names there. 

But none of that now. 

Up and down the hall she sped in some man’s 
arms, round and round, up and down, until 
another man, agile, dexterous, shot between 
96 


BETWEEN DANCES 


the couples and claimed her. And then up and 
down again until some other man. . . . And 
sometimes they went back to rest in the inti- 
mately arranged chairs beneath the balcony, 
and sometimes stepped out of doors to saunter 
along a wide terrace. 

It was incredibly independent. It was in- 
toxicatingly free. It was also terrifyingly 
responsible. 

And Maria Angelina, in her young fear of 
unpopularity, smiled so ingenuously upon each 
arrival, with a shy, backward deprecatory 
glance at her lost partner, that she stirred 
something new and wondering in each sea- 
soned breast, and each dancer came again and 
again. 

But all of them, the new young men from 
town, the tennis champion from Yale, the polo 
player from England, the lawyer from Wash- 
ington, the stout widower, the professional 
bachelor, all were only moving shapes that 
came and went and came again and by their 
tribute made her successful in Johnny's eyes. 
97 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


Indeed, so well did they do their work that 
Johnny was moved to brusque expostulation. 

“Look here, Ri-Ri, I told you this was to 
be my dance ! With all those outsiders cutting 
in — Freeze them, Ri-Ri. Try a long, hard 
level look on the next one you see making 
your way. . . . Don’t you want to dance with 
me, any more ? Huh ? Where’s that stand-in 
of mine? Is it a little, old last year’s model?” 

“But what am I to do — — ?” 

“Fight ’em off. Bite ’em. Kick their shins. 
. . . Oh, Lord,” groaned Johnny, dexterously 
whirling her about, “there’s another coming. 
. . . Here’s where we go. This way out.” 

Speedily he piloted her through the throng. 
Masterfully he caught her arm and drew her 
out of doors. 

She was glad to be out of the dance. His 
clasp had been growing too personal . . . too 
tight. . . . Perhaps she was only oddly self- 
conscious . . . incapable of the serene detach- 
ment of those other dancers, who, yielding and 
intertwined, revolved in intimate harmony. 

98 


BETWEEN DANCES 


There was a moon. It shone soft and bright 
upon them, making a world of enchantment. 
The long lines of the mountains melted to- 
gether like a violet cloud and above them a 
round top floated, pale and dreamy, as the 
dome of Saint Peter’s at twilight. 

From the terrace stretched a grassy path 
where other couples were strolling and Johnny 
Byrd guided her past them. They walked in 
silence. He kept his hand on her arm and from 
time to time glanced about at her in a half- 
constraint that was no part of his usual air. 

At a curve of the path the girl drew def- 
initely back. 

“Ah no ” 

“Oh, why not? Isn’t it the custom?” He 
laughed over the often-cited phrase but ab- 
sently. His eyes had a warm, hurrying look 
in them that rooted her feet the more stub- 
bornly to the ground. 

“Decidedly not.” She turned a merriment 
lighted face to him. “To walk alone with a 

99 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


young man — between dances — beneath the 
moon!” 

Maria Angelina shuddered and cast impish 
eyes at heaven. 

“Honestly?” Johnny demanded. “Do you 
mean to tell me you’ve never walked between 
dances with young men?” 

“I tell you that I have never even danced 

with a young man until ” She flashed 

away from that memory. “Until I came to 
America. I am not yet in Italian society. I 
have never been presented. It is not yet my 
time.” 

“But — but don’t the sub debs have any good 
times over there? Don’t you have dances of 
your own? Don’t you meet fellows? Don’t 
you know anybody?” Johnny demanded with 
increasing amazement at each new shake of 
her head. 

“Oh, come,” he protested. “You can’t put 
that over me. I’ll bet you’ve got a bagful of 
fellows crazy about you. Don’t you ever slip 


ioo 


BETWEEN DANCES 


out on an errand, you know, and find some one 
waiting round the corner ?” 

“You are speaking of the customs of my 
maid, perhaps,” said Maria Angelina with be- 
coming young haughtiness. “For myself, I 
do not go upon errands. I have never been 
upon the streets alone.” 

Johnny Byrd stared. With a supreme effort 
of credulity he envisaged the fact. Perhaps it 
was really so. Perhaps she was just as se- 
questered and guileless and inexperienced as 
that. It was ridiculous. It was amusing. It 
was — somehow — intriguing. 

With his hand upon her bare arm he drew 
her closer. 

“Ri-Ri — honest now — is this the first ?” 

She drew away instinctively before the sup- 
pressed excitement of him. Her heart beat 
fast; her hands were very cold. She knew 
elation . . . and panic . . . and dread and 
hope. 

It was for this she had come. Young and 
rich and free! What more would Mamma 


IOI 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


ask? What greater triumph could be hers? 

“I'd like to make a lot of other things the 
first, too,” muttered Johnny. 

To Ri-Ri it seemed irrevocable things were 
being said. But she still held lightly away 
from him, resisting the clumsy pull of his arm. 
He hesitated — laughed oddly. 

“It ought to be against the law for any 
girl to look the way you do, Ri-Ri.” He 
laughed again. “I wonder if you know how 
the deuce you do look?” 

“Perhaps it is the moonlight, Signor.” 

“Moonlight — you look as if you were made 
of it. . . .1 could eat you up, Ri-Ri.” His 
eyes on her red little mouth, on her white, beat- 
ing throat. His voice had an odd, husky note. 

“Don’t be such a little frost, Ri-Ri. Don’t 
you like me at all?” 

It was the dream coming true. It was the 
fairy prince — not the false figure she had set 
in the prince’s place, but a proud revenge upon 
him. This was reality, fulfillment. 

She saw herself already married to Johnny, 
102 


BETWEEN DANCES 


returning proudly with him to Italy. She saw 
them driving in a victoria, openly as man and 
wife — or no, Johnny would have a wonderful 
car, all metal and bright color. They would be 
magnificently touring, with their luggage 
strapped on the side, as she had seen Ameri- 
cans. 

She saw them turning into the sombre 
courtway of the old Palazzo Santonini and, 
so surely had she been attuned to the American 
note, she could presage Johnny’s blunt dispar- 
agement. He would be astonished that they 
were living upon the third floor — with the low- 
er apartment let. He would be amused at 
the servants toiling up the stairs from the 
kitchens to the dining hall. He would be en- 
tertained at the solitary tub. He would be dis- 
gusted, undoubtedly, at the candles. . . . 

But of course Mamma would have every- 
thing very beautiful. There would be no lack 
of candles. . . . The chandeliers would be 
sparkling for that dinner. There would be de- 
licious food, delicate wines, an abundant gleam 
103 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


of shining plate and crystal and embroidered 
linens. 

And how Lucia would stare, how dear Juli- 
etta would smile ! She would buy Julietta the 
prettiest clothes, the cleverest hats. . . . She 
would give dear Mamma gold — something that 
neither dear Papa nor Francisco knew about 
— and to dear Papa and Francisco she would 
give, too, a little gold — something that dear 
Mamma did not know about. 

For once Papa could have something for his 
play that was not a roast from his kitchen nor 
clothes from his daughters’ backs nor oats 
from his horses ! 

Probably they would be married at once. 
Johnny was free and rich — and impatient. She 
did not suspect him of interest in a long woo- 
ing or betrothal. . . . And while she must ap- 
pear to be in favor of a return home, first, and 
a marriage from her home, the American cere- 
mony would cut many knots for her — save 
much expense at home. . . . 

She saw herself proudly exhibiting Johnny, 
104 


BETWEEN DANCES 


delighting in his youth, his blonde American- 
ism, his smartly cut clothes, his conqueror’s 
assurance. 

Meanwhile Maria Angelina was still stand- 
ing there in the moonlight, like a little wraith 
of silver, smiling with absent eyes at Johnny’s 
muttered words, withdrawing, in childish 
panic, from Johnny’s close pressing ardor. She 
knew that if he persisted . . . but before her 
soft detachment, her half laughing evasiveness 
of his mood, he did not persist. He seemed 
oddly struggling with some withholding uncer- 
tainties of his own. 

“Oh, well, if that’s all you like me,” said 
Johnny grumpily. 

It was reprieve . . . reprieve to the irrevoc- 
able things. Her heart danced . . . and yet a 
piqued resentment pinched her. 

He had been able to resist. 

She knew subtly that she could have over- 
come that irresolution. . . . But she was not 
going to make things too easy for him — her 
Santonini pride forbade! 

xo 5 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“We must go back,” she told him and ex- 
ulted in his moodiness. 

And for the rest of the evening his arm 
pressed her, his eyes smiled down significantly 
upon her, and when she confronted the great 
mirror again it was to glimpse a girl with 
darkly shining eyes and cheeks like scarlet pop- 
pies, a girl in white, like a bride, and with a 
bride’s high pride and assured heart. 

She slept, that night, composing the letter to 
dear Mamma. 


CHAPTER VI 


TWO— AND A MOUNTAIN 

T HE next morning was given to recov- 
ery from the dance. In the afternoon 
the Martins had planned a mountain 
climb. It was not a really bad mountain, at all, 
and the arrangement was to start in the late 
afternoon, have dinner upon the top, and de- 
scend by moonlight. 

It was the plan of the younger inexhaustibles 
among the group, but in spite of faint protests 
from some of the elders all the Martin house- 
party was in line for the climb, and with the 
addition of the Blair party and several other 
couples from the Lodge, quite a procession was 
formed upon the path by the river. 

It was a lovely day — a shade too hot, if any- 
thing was to be urged against it. The sun 
struck great shafts of golden light amid the 
107 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


rich green of the forest, splashing the great 
tree boles with bold light and shade. The air 
was fragrant with spruce and pine and faint, 
aromatic wintergreen. A hot little wind 
rocked the reflections in the river and blew its 
wimpling surface into crinkled, lace-paper fan- 
tasies. 

Overhead the sky burned blue through the 
white-cottonballs of cloud. 

Bob Martin headed the procession, Ruth at 
his side, and the stout widower concluded it, 
squiring a rather heavy-footed Mrs. Martin. 
Midway in the line came Mrs. Blair, and be- 
side her, abandoning the line of young people 
behind the immediate leaders was a small fig- 
ure in short white skirt and middy, pressing 
closely to her Cousin Jane's side. 

It was Maria Angelina, her dark hair braid- 
ed as usual about her head, her eyes a shade 
downcast and self-conscious, withdrawn and 
tight-wrapped as any prudish young bud. 

But if virginal pride had urged her to flee 
all appearance of expectation, an equally sharp 
108 


TWO— AND A MOUNTAIN 


masculine reaction was withholding Johnny 
Byrd from any appearance of pursuit. 

He went from group to group, clowning it 
with jokes and laughter, and only from the 
corners of his eyes perceiving that small figure, 
like a child's in its white play clothes. 

For half an hour that separation endured — 
a half hour in which Cousin Jane told Maria 
Angelina all about her first mountain climb, 
when a girl, and the storm that had driven her- 
self and her sister and her father and the guide 
to sleep in the only shelter, and of the guide's 
snores that were louder than the thunder — 
and Maria Angelina laughed somehow in the 
right places without taking in a word, for all 
the time apprehension was tightening, tighten- 
ing like a violin string about to snap. 

And then, when it was drawn so tight that 
it did not seem possible to endure any more, 
Johnny Byrd appeared at Ri-Ri's side, con- 
scious-eyed and boyishly embarrassed, but 
managing an offhand smile. 

109 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“And is this the very first mountain you've 
ever climbed?" he demanded banteringly. 

Gladness rushed back into the girl. She 
raised a face that sparkled. 

“The very first," she affirmed, very much out 
of breath. “That is, upon the feet. In Italy 
we go up by diligence and there is always a 
hotel at the top for tea." 

“We’ll have a little old bonfire at the top 
for tea. . . . Don’t take it so fast and you’ll be 
all right," he advised, and, laying a restraining 
hand upon her arm he held her back while 
Cousin Jane, with her casual, careless smile, 
passed ahead to join one of the Martin party. 

It was an act of masterful significance. Ma- 
ria Angelina accepted it meekly. 

“Like this?" asked Johnny of her smiling 
face. 

“I love it," she told him, and looked happily 
at the green woods about them, and across the 
river, rushing now, : to where the forest was 
clinging to sharply rising mountain flanks. 
Her eyes followed till they found the bare, 


no 


TWO— AND A MOUNTAIN 


shouldering peaks outlined against the blue 
and white of the cumulous sky. 

The beauty about her flooded the springs of 
happiness. It was a wonderful world, a ra- 
diant world, a world of dream and delights. It 
was a world more real than the fantasy of 
moonlight. She felt more real. She was her- 
self, too, not some strange, diaphanous image 
conjured out of tulle and gauze, she was her 
own true flesh-and-blood self, living in a dream 
that was true. 

She looked away from the mountains and 
smiled up at Johnny Byrd very much as the 
young princess in the fairy tale must have 
smiled at the all-conquering prince, and 
Johnny Byrd’s blue eyes grew bluer and bright- 
er and his voice dropped into intimate possess- 
iveness. 

It didn’t matter in the least what they talked 
about. They were absurdly merry, loitering 
behind the procession. 

Suddenly it occurred to Maria Angelina that 
it had been some time since he had drawn her 


hi 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


back from Cousin Jane's casual but compre- 
hending smile, some time since they had even 
heard the echo of voices ahead. 

Her conscience woke guiltily. 

“We must hurry,” she declared, quickening 
her own small steps. 

Teasingly Johnny Byrd hung back. “ 'Fraid 
cat, 'fraid cat — what you 'fraid of, Maria An- 
gelina?” 

He added, “I'm not going to eat you — 
though I’d like to,” he finished ifi lower tone. 

“But it is getting dark! There are clouds,” 
said the girl, gazing up in frank surprise at the 
changed sky. She had not noticed when the 
sunlight fled. It was still visible across the 
river, slipping over a hill's shoulder, but from 
their woods it was withdrawn and a dark 
shadow was stretching across them. 

“Clouds — what do you care for clouds?” 
scoffed Johnny gayly, and in his rollicking 
tenor, “Just roll dem clouds along,” sang he. 

Politely Maria Angelina waited until he had 


1 12 


TWO— AND A MOUNTAIN 


finished the song, but she waited with an un- 
easy mind. 

She cared very much for clouds. They 
looked very threatening, blowing so suddenly 
over the mountain top, overcasting the bright- 
ness of the way. And behind the scattered 
white were blowing gray ones, their edges 
frayed like torn clothes on a line, and after the 
gray ones loomed a dark, black one, rushing 
nearer. 

And suddenly the woods at their right began 
to thresh about, with a surprised rustling, and 
a low mutter, as of smothered warning, ran 
over the shoulder of the mountain. 

“Rain ! As sure as the Lord made little rain 
drops,” said Johnny unconcerned. “There's 
going to be a cloudful spilled on us,” he told 
the troubled girl, “but it won't last a moment. 
Come into the wood and find the dry side of 
a tree.” 

He caught at her hand and brought her 
crashing through the underbrush, pushing 
through thickets till they were in the center of 
113 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


a great group of maples, their heavy boughs 
spread protectingly above. 

A giant tree trunk protected her upon one 
side; upon the other Johnny drew close, spread- 
ing his sweater across her shoulders. Looking 
upwards, Maria Angelina could not see the 
sky; above and about her was soft greenness, 
like a fairy bower. And when the rain came 
pouring like hail upon the leaves scarcely a 
drop won through to her. 

They stood very still, unmoving, unspeaking 
while the shower fell. There was an unreal 
dreamlike quality about the happening to the 
girl. Then, almost intrusively, she became 
deeply aware of his presence there beside her — 
and conscious that he was aware of hers. 

She shivered. 

“Cold,” said Johnny, in a jumpy voice, and 
put a hand on her shoulders, guarded by his 
sweater. 

“N-no,” she whispered. 

“Feel dry?” 


TWO— AND A MOUNTAIN 


His hand moved upward to her bared head, 
lingered there upon the heavy braids. 

“Yes,” she told him, faintly as before. 

“But you’re shivering.” 

“I don’t like t-thunder,” she told him ab- 
surdly, as a muttering roll shook the air above 
them. 

His hand, still hovering over her hair, went 
down against her cheek and pressed her to 
him. She could hear his heart beating. It 
sounded as loudly in his breast as her own. 
She had a sense of sudden, unpremeditated 
emotion. 

She felt his lips upon the back of her neck. 

She tried to draw away, and suddenly he 
let her go and gave a short, unsteady laugh. 

“It’s all right, Ri-Ri — you’re my little pal, 
aren’t you?” he murmured. 

Unseeingly she nodded, drawing a long, 
shaken breath. Then as he started to draw her 
nearer again she moved away, putting up her 
arms to her hair in a gesture that instinctively 
shielded the confusion of her face. 

ii5 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“No? ... All right, Ri-Ri, I won’t crowd 
you/’ he murmured. “But oh, you little 
Beauty Girl, you ought to be in a cage with 
bars about. . . .You ought to wear a mask — 
a regular diving outfit ” 

Unexpectedly Ri-Ri recovered her self-pos- 
session. Again she fled from the consumma- 
tion of the scene. 

“I shall wear nothing so unbecoming,” she 
flung lightly back. “And it has not been rain- 
ing for ever so long. Unless you wish to build 
a nest in the forest, like a new fashion of 
oriole, Signor Byrd, you had better hurry and 
catch up with the others.” 

Johnny did not speak as they came out of the 
woods and in silence they hurried along the 
path on the river’s edge. 

The sun came out again to light them; on 
the green leaves about them the wetness glit- 
tered and dried and the ephemeral shower 
seemed as unreal as the memory it evoked. 

With her head bent Maria Angelina pressed 
on in a haste that grew into anxiety. Not a 
116 


TWO— AND A MOUNTAIN 


sound came back to them from those others 
ahead. Not a voice. Not a footstep. 

And presently the path appeared dying un- 
der their feet. 

Green moss overspread it. Brambles linked 
arms across it. 

‘They are not here. We are on the wrong 
way,” cried Maria Angelina and turned 
startled eyes on the young man. 

Johnny Byrd refused to take alarm. 

“They must have crossed the river farther 
back — that's the answer,” he said easily. “We 
went past the right crossing — probably just 
after the storm. You know you were speeding 
like a two-year-old on the home stretch.” 

But Ri-Ri refused to shoulder all that blame. 

“It might have been before the storm — while 
we were lingering so,” she urged distressfully. 
“You know that for so long we had heard 
nothing — we ought to go back quickly — very 
quickly and find that crossing.” 

Johnny did not look back. He looked across 
the river, which ran more deeply here between 

117 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


narrowed banks, and then glanced on ahead. 

“Oh, we'll go ahead and cross the next 
chance we get," he informed her. “We can 
strike in from there to old Baldy. I know the 
way. . . . Trust your Uncle Leatherstocking," 
he told her genially. 

But no geniality appeased Maria Angelina's 
deepening sense of foreboding. 

She quickened her steps after him as he 
strode on ahead, gallantly holding back bram- 
bles for her and helping her scramble over 
fallen logs, and she assented, with the eager- 
ness of anxiety, when he announced a place 
as safe for crossing. 

It was at the head of a mild rush of rapids, 
and an outcropping of large rocks made pos- 
sible, though slippery, stepping-stones. 

But Ri-Ri's heelless shoes were rubber soled, 
and she was both fearless and alert. And 
though the last leap was too long for her, for 
she landed in the shallows with splashing an- 
kles, she had scarcely a down glance for them. 

118 


TWO— AND A MOUNTAIN 


Her worried eyes were searching the green up- 
lands before them. 

Secretly she was troubled at Johnny's instant 
choice of way. Her own instinct was to go 
back along the river and then strike in towards 
old Baldy, but men, she knew from Papa, did 
not like objections to their wisdom, so she re- 
minded herself that she was a stranger and ig- 
norant of this country and that Johnny Byrd 
knew his mountains. 

He told her, as they went along, how well 
he knew them. 

Steadily their path climbed. 

“Should we not wind back a little ?" she ven- 
tured once. 

“Oh, we're on another path — we'll dip back 
and meet the other path a little higher up," 
the young man told her. 

But still the path did not dip back. It 
reached straight up. But Johnny would not 
abandon it. He seemed to feel it inextricably 
united with his own rightness of decision, and 
119 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


since he was inevitably right, so inevitably the 
path must disclose its desired character. 

But once or twice he paused and looked out 
over the way. Then, hopefully, Ri-Ri hung 
upon his expression, longing for reconsidera- 
tion. But he never faltered, always on her ap- 
proach he charged ahead again. 

No holding back of brambles, now. No help- 
ing over logs. Johnny was the pathfinder, 
oblivious, intent, and Ri-Ri, the pioneer wo- 
man, enduring as best she might. 

Up he drove, straight up the mountain side, 
and after him scrambled the girl, her fears 
voiceless in her throat, her heart pounding with 
exertion and anxiety like a ship’s engine in her 
side. 

Time seemed interminable. There was no 
sun now. The gray and white clouds were 
spread thinly over the sky and only a diffused 
brightness gave the suggestion of the west. 

When the path wound through woods it 
seemed already night. On barren slopes the 
day was clear again. 


120 


TWO— AND A MOUNTAIN 


Hours passed. Endless hours to the tired- 
footed girl. They had left the last woods be- 
hind them now and reached a clearing of 
bracken among the granite, and here Johnny 
Byrd stopped, and stared out with an uncon- 
cealed bewilderment that turned her hopes to 
lead. 

With him, she stared out at the great gray 
peaks closing in about them without recogniz- 
ing a friend among them. Dim and unfamiliar 
they loomed, shrouded in clouds, like chilly 
giants in gray mufflers against the damp. 

It was not old Baldy. It could not be old 
Baldy. One looked up at old Baldy from the 
Lodge and she had heard that from old Baldy 
one looked down upon the Lodge and the river 
and the opening valley. She had been told 
that from old Baldy the Martin chalet re- 
sembled a cuckoo clock. . . . 

No cuckoo clocks in those vague sweeps be- 
low. 

“Can we not go down a little bit ?” said Ma- 
ria Angelina gently. “Farther down again 
121 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


we might find the right path. . . . Up here — 
I think we are on the wrong mountain.’’ 

Turning, Johnny looked about. Ahead of 
him were overhanging slabs of rock. 

Irresolution vanished. “That’s the top 
now,” he declared. “We are just coming up 
the wrong side, that’s all. I’ll say it’s wrong — 
but here we are. I’ll bet the others are up 
there now — lapping up that food. Come on, 
Ri-Ri, we haven’t far now to go.” 

In a gust of optimism he held out his hand 
and Maria Angelina clutched it with a weari- 
ness courage could not conceal. 

It seemed to her that her breath was gone 
utterly, that her feet were leaden weights and 
her muscles limply effortless. But after him 
she plunged, panting and scrambling up the 
rocks, and then, very suddenly, they found 
themselves to be on only a plateau and the real 
mountain head reared high and aloof above. 

Under his breath — and not particularly un- 
der it, either — Johnny Byrd uttered a distinct 
blasphemy. 


122 


TWO— AND A MOUNTAIN 


And in her heart Maria Angelina awfully 
seconded it. 

Then with decidedly assumed nonchalance, 
“Gosh! All that way to supper!” said the 
young man. “Well, come on, then — we got 
to make a dent in this.” 

“Oh, are you sure — are you sure that this is 
the right mountain?” Maria Angelina begged 
of him. 

“Don't I know Baldy?” he retorted. “We’re 
just on another side of it from the others, I 
told you. Come on, Ri-Ri — we’ll soon smell 
the coffee boiling.” 

She wished he had not mentioned coffee. It 
put a name to that gnawing, indefinite feeling 
she had been too intent to own. 

Coffee . . . Fragrant and steaming, with 
bread and butter . . . sandwiches filled with 
minced ham, with cream cheese, with olive 
paste — sandwiches filled with anything at all! 
Cold chicken . . . salad . . . fruit. Food in 
any form! Food!! 


123 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


She felt empty. Utterly empty and discon- 
solate. 

And she was tired. She had never known 
such tiredness- — her feet ached, her legs ached, 
her back ached, her arms ached. She could 
have dropped with the achingness of her. 
Each effort was a punishment. 

Yet she went on with a feverish haste. She 
was driven by a compulsion to which fatigue 
was nothing. 

It had become terrible not to be reunited 
with the others. She thought of the hours, the 
long hours, that she and Johnny Byrd had been 
alone and she flinched, shivering under the 
whiplash of fear. 

What were they saying of her, those others? 
What were they thinking ? 

She knew how unwarrantable, how inexcus- 
able a thing she had done. 

It had begun with deliberate loitering. For 
that — for a little of that — she had the sanction 
of the new American freedom, the permission 
of Cousin Jane’s casual, understanding smile. 

124 


TWO— AND A MOUNTAIN 


“It’s all right,” that smile had seemed to 
say to her, “it’s all right as long as it’s Johnny 
Byrd — but be careful, Ri-Ri.” 

And she had loitered shamefully, she had 
plunged into the woods with Johnny in that 
thunder storm, she had let him take her on the 
wrong path. 

And now it was growing dark and they were 
far from the others — and she was not sure, 
even, that they were upon the right way. 

But they must be. They could not be so 
hideously, so finally wrong. 

Panic routed her exhaustion and she toiled 
furiously on. 

“You’re a pretty good scout — for a little 
Wop,” said Johnny Byrd with a sudden grin 
and a moment’s brightness was lighted within 
her. 

She did not speak — she could only breathe 
hard and smile. 

Nearer and nearer they gained the top, 
rough climbing but not dangerous. The top 
I2S 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


was not far now. Johnny shouted and listened, 
then shouted again. 

Once they thought they heard voices but it 
was only the echoes of their own, borne hol- 
lowly back. 

“The wind is the other way,” said Johnny, 
and on they went, charging up a steep, gravelly 
slope over more rocks and into a scrub group 
of firs. . . . 

Surely this was as near the top as one could 
go! Nothing above but barren, tilted rock. 
Nothing beyond but more boulders and 
stunted trees. The place lay bare before their 
eyes. 

Round and round they went, calling, holding 
their breath to listen. Then, with a common 
impulse, they turned and stared at each other. 

That moment told Maria Angelina what 
panic was. 


CHAPTER VII 


JOHNNY BECOMES INEVITABLE 

S HE did not speak. She was afraid she 
was going to burst into tears. Her knees 
were trembling and she sat down with 
the effect of collapse and looked mutely up at 
Johnny. 

“Judas,” said Johnny bitterly. 

He stared around once more, evading her 
eyes now, and then he moved over and sat 
down beside her, drawing out his cigarettes. 

Slowly he took one, tapped its end upon a 
rock, and lighted it. Then, the case still open, 
he looked inquiringly at her. 

“Smoke, Ri-Ri?” he questioned. “Ought to 
— never too late to learn.” 

She shook her head, smiling faintly. She 
knew his own perturbation must be immense. 
127 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


She did not want to add to it; she wanted to 
be brave and conceal her own agony. 

He put the cigarettes away and from an in- 
ner pocket drew out a cake of chocolate. 

“Supper,” he announced. 

She broke the cake in two even halves, giv- 
ing him back one. He took but half of that. 
With the cigarette between his lips he felt bet- 
ter. Slowly he relaxed. 

“I'll have to teach you how to smoke,” he 
said, blowing rings. “When we’re rested we’ll 
get some wood and build a fire. The others 
will see that and signal back and we’ll make 
connections.” 

At that she stared, round-eyed. “Wait for 
a fire?” Incredulously she straightened. Her 
voice grew breathless. “Oh, no, we must go — 
we must go,” she said with a hint of wildness 
in her urgency. 

Deliberately Johnny leaned back. “Go? Go 
where ?” 

“Go down. Go to where the others are. 
We must find them.” 


128 


JOHNNY BECOMES INEVITABLE 


“Nothing doing. ,, Johnny rubbed a stout 
leg. “Your Uncle Dudley is all in. So are 
you.” 

“But I can go, I am able to go on,” she in- 
sisted. “And I would rather — Oh, if you 
please, I would so much rather go on at once. 
We cannot wait like this.” 

“I’ll say we can wait like this. Watch me.” 

“But we cannot stay ” 

“Well, we cannot go,” said Johnny mimick- 
ing. “We’d get nowhere if we did try. We’d 
just go round and round. Our best bet is to 
stay on this peak and signal. Believe me, I’m 
not going to stir for one long while.” 

Again the fear of tears choked back the 
words that rushed upon her. She told herself 
that she must not be weak and frantic and 
make a scene. . . . Men abhorred scenes. 
And it would not help. It would only anger 
him. He was tired now. He was not thinking 
of her. He had not realized the situation. 

Presently he would realize. . . . And, any- 
way, he was there with her, he would take care 
129 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


of her, protect her from the tongues of gossip. 

Slowly Johnny smoked two cigarettes, then 
he rose and gathered sticks for a fire. It 
burned briskly, its swift flame throwing a 
glowing circle about them and extinguishing 
the rest of the world. 

There had been no sunset. A bank of clouds 
had swallowed the last vestige of ruddy light. 
The mountain peaks darkened. It was grow- 
ing night. 

“We’ll wait for moonlight,” said Johnny 
Byrd. 

But at that Maria Angelina’s eyes came 
away from those mountains which she was un- 
remittingly watching for an answering fire and 
fixed themselves upon his face in startled hor- 
ror. 

“Moonlight!” she gasped. “But no — no! 
We must not wait any more. It is too late 
now. We must get down as soon as we can.” 

“Why, you little baby!” Johnny Byrd moved 
nearer to her. “What you ’fraid of, Ri-Ri? 
We can’t help how late it is, can we?” 

130 


JOHNNY BECOMES INEVITABLE 


He put an arm about her and drew her 
gently close, and because she was so tired and 
frightened and upset Maria Angelina could no 
longer resist the tears that came blinding her 
eyes. 

“You little baby!” said Johnny again softly, 
and suddenly she felt his kiss upon her cheek. 

“Poor little Ri-Ri! Poor tired little girl!” 

“Oh, you must not. Signor, you must not.” 

“Signor,” he said reproachfully. 

“J-Johnny,” she choked. 

“That's better. . . . All right, I’ll be good, 
Ri-Ri. Just sit still. And I'll be good.” 

But firmly he kept his arm about her and 
soon her tense little figure relaxed in that 
strong clasp. She was not frightened, as last 
night at the dance, she felt utterly forlorn and 
comforted by his strength. 

They sat very still, unspeaking in that silent 
embrace, and about them it grew colder and 
darker while the sky seemed to grow thinner 
and grayer and clear. And at last against the 
pallor of the sky, mountain after mountain 
13 1 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


lifted itself out of the shadowy cloud mass, 
and peak after peak defined itself, stretching 
on and on like an army of giants. 

Then the ridges grew blacker again, and 
back of one edge a sharp flare of light flamed, 
and a blood red disc of a moon came pushing 
furiously up into the sky, flinging down a 
transforming radiance. 

In the valley the silvery birches gleamed like 
wood nymphs against the ebony firs. 

Beauty had touched the world again. A long 
breath came fluttering from the girl's lips; she 
felt strangely solaced and comforted. After 
all, it was Johnny with her . . . the fairy 
prince. Her dreams were coming true . . . 
even under the shadow of this tragedy. 

Again she felt his lips upon her cheek and 
now he was trying to turn her head towards 
him. Mutely she resisted, drawing away, but 
his force increased. She closed her eyes; she 
felt his kiss upon her hair, her cheek, the cor- 
ner of her unstirring mouth. 

And she thought that it was his right — if 
132 


JOHNNY BECOMES INEVITABLE 


she turned from him she would seem strangely 
refusing. An American, she knew, kissed his 
fiancee freely. 

But it was a tremendous freedom. . . . 

It would have been — knightlier, she thought 
quiveringly, if he had not done that, if he had 
revealed a more respectful homage. 

But these were American ways . . . and he 
was a man and he loved her and he wanted to 
feel that she belonged to him utterly. It was 
comfort for her troubled spirit. 

But when she felt his hand trying to turn 
up her chin, so that her young lips might meet 
his, she slipped decidedly away. 

“No? All right.” Johnny gave a short, un- 
certain laugh. “All right, little girl, I’ll be 
good.” 

She had risen to her feet and he rose now 
and his voice changed to a heartier note. 

“Ready for the going? We’ll have to make 
a start, I suppose. I don’t see any rescue ex- 
peditions starting this way. . . . Lordy, I’m 
133 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


a starved man! I could eat the side of a 
house.” 

“I could eat the other side,” said Maria An- 
gelina smiling shakily. 

Johnny put out the fire, ground out its em- 
bers beneath his heels, and started down upon 
the trail that they had come. Closely after him 
came the girl. The moonlight flooded the 
mountain side with vague, uncertain light and 
the descent was a difficult and dangerous mat- 
ter. 

They tripped over rocks ; they stumbled 
through underbrush. The moon was their only 
clue to direction and the moon seemed to be 
slipping past the peaks at a confusing speed. 

“We’re going down anyway,” said Johnny 
Byrd grimly. 

Sharply they were stopped. The ledge on 
which they found themselves ended abruptly, 
like a bluff, and peering over its edge they 
looked down into the dark tops of tall fir trees. 

No more descent there. 

In disgusted rage Johnny strode up and 
134 


JOHNNY BECOMES INEVITABLE 


down the length of that ledge but it was a clear 
shelf, with no way out from it except the way 
that they had come. There was no approach 
from below. 

“And some fools go in for mountaineering!” 
said Johnny Byrd bitterly. 

It was the last gust of humor in him. He 
was furious — and he grew more furious unre- 
strainedly. He exploded in muttered oaths and 
exclamations. 

In her troubled little heart Maria Angelina 
felt for him. She knew that he was tired and 
hungry, and men, when they were hungry, 
were very unhappy. But she was tired and 
hungry, too — and her reputation, the repu- 
tation that was her very existence, was in 
jeopardy. 

Up they scrambled, from the ledge again, 
and once back upon the mountain side, they 
circled farther back around the mountain be- 
fore starting down again. 

Blindly Maria Angelina followed Johnny’s 
lead. She tripped over roots ; she caught upon 
135 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


brambles. With her last shreds of vanity she 
was grateful that he could not see her stream- 
ing hair and scratched and dirty face. 

It had grown darker and darker and the 
moon had vanished utterly behind the clouds. 
The air was damp and cold. A wind was ris- 
ing. 

Suddenly their feet struck into the faint line 
of a path. Eagerly they followed. It wound 
on back across the mountain side and rounded 
a wooded spur. 

“It will lead somewhere, anyway,” declared 
Johnny, hope returning good nature to his 
tone. 

“But it is not the right way,” Maria An- 
gelina combated in distress. “See, we are not 
going down any more. Oh, let us keep on 
going down until we find that river below, and 
then we can return to the Lodge ” 

“You come on,” said Johnny firmly, striding 
on ahead, and unhappily she followed, her 
anxiety warring with her weariness. 

What time could it be ? She felt as if it were 
136 


JOHNNY BECOMES INEVITABLE 


the middle of the night. The picnickers must 
all be home by now, looking for her, organiz- 
ing searching parties perhaps. . . . What must 
they think? What must they not think? 

She saw her Cousin Jane's distress. . . . 
Ruth’s disgust. Would they imagine that she 
had eloped? 

She knew but little of American conventions 
and that little told her that the ceremonies were 
easy of accomplishment. Young people were 
always eloping. . . . The consent of guardians 
was not necessary. . . . How terrible, if they 
imagined her gone on a romantic elopement, to 
have her return, mud plastered, after a night 
with a young man upon the mountain ! 

A night upon the mountain with a young 
man ... a young man in love with her. 

Scandal. . . . Unbelievable shame. 

She felt as if they were in the grip of a 
nightmare. 

They must hurry, hurry. Somehow they 
must gain upon that night, they must return 
to the Lodge before it was too late. 

137 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


A cold sprinkle of rain fell, plastering her 
middy shiveringly to her, but the rain soon 
stopped and the path grew clearer and more 
and more defined as they stumbled along it to 
its end. 

It was not a house they found. It was not 
really a cabin. It was just three walls of logs 
built against the rocky face of the mountain. 

But it was a hut, a shelter, with a door that 
swung open on leather hinges at Johnny's tug. 

He called, then peered within. Finally he 
struck a match and stared about and Maria 
Angelina came to look, too. The place was so 
tiny that a bed of boughs and blankets on the 
floor covered most of the space, save for a few 
boxes. Outside the doors were the ashes of old 
fires. 

“Well, it's something ” said Johnny in glum 
resignation. “Hasn’t the fool that built it any 
food?” 

Vigorously he poked about the tiny place, 
then emerged to report in disgust, “Not a darn 
thing. . . . Oh, well, it’s a shelter, anyway.” 
138 


JOHNNY BECOMES INEVITABLE 


The incredible idea pierced Maria Angelina 
that he was going to pause there for rest. 

“Oh, we must go on,” she insisted. 

“Go on?” He turned to stare in indignation 
at the girl who had gasped that at him. “Go 
on? In this dark? When it's going to rain? 
Why, you’re nearly all in, now.” 

“Indeed — indeed, I am not all in,” she pro- 
tested. “It is not necessary for me to rest — 
not necessary at all. I am quite strong. I 
want only to go on — to go to the Lodge ” 

“We’ll never make the Lodge to-night. We’ll 
have to camp here the best way we can.” 

It seemed to her that she could hardly have 
heard him. It was so incredible a thought — so 
overwhelming 

A queer gulping sound came from her 
throat. Her words fell without her volition, 
like spent breaths. 

“But that is wrong. We cannot stay. We 
cannot stay like that ” 

“Why can’t we stay?” 

“It — it is impossible! The scandal ” 

139 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


Angrily he wheeled about. “Scandal?” he 
said sharply. “What the hell scandal is 
there?” 

His indignation at the words could not dis- 
pel her terror. But it was something to have 
him so hot her champion. 

“You know, they will all talk ” 

“Let 'em talk,” he said curtly. “We can't 
help it.'' 

She put a hand to her throat as if to still that 
throbbing pulse there that impeded speech. 

“I know we cannot help it. But we can- 
not — not give them so much to talk of. We 
can be trying to return ” 

“Don't be a goose, Ri-Ri!” he broke in 
sharply. 

He was a man. He did not understand the 
full agony. . . . Desperately Maria Angelina 
wondered as to her reception. She had no 
parallel in Italian society. The thing could not 
happen in Italian society. A girl, a well born 
girl, rambling the woods all night with her 
fiance ! 


140 


JOHNNY BECOMES INEVITABLE 


She wondered if the announcement of their 
engagement instantly upon their return would 
appease the world. Of course, there would al- 
ways be the story. As long as she lived there 
would be the story. But as Johnny's wife, tri- 
umphant, assured, she could afford to ignore 
it. 

At her stillness Johnny had looked about, 
and something infinitely drooping and forlorn 
in the vague outlines of her small figure made 
its softening appeal. 

His voice changed. “Don't you worry, little 
girl," he told her soothingly, “I'll take care of 
you." 

Her heart leaped. 

“Ah, yes," she said faintly, “but what can 
we do? Had it better be at once ?" 

“At once ?" 

“The marriage," she choked out. 

“Marriage?" Even in the dimness she saw 
that he raised his head, his chin stiffening, his 
whole outline hardening. 

141 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“What are you talking about?” he said very 
roughly. 

“About — about our marriage,” she repeated 
trembling, and then, at something in his hard- 
ness and his grimness, “Why, what did you 
mean ? Must it not be soon?” 

A dreadful, deliberate silence engulfed her 
words. 

Coldly Johnny's slow voice broke it. 

“Who said anything about marriage?” defi- 
antly he demanded. “I never asked you to 
marry me.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


JOHNNY BECOMES EXPLICIT 

I NEVER asked you to marry me,” he re- 
peated very stiffly. 

The crash of all her worlds sounded in 
Maria Angelina’s ears. An aghast bewilder- 
ment flooded her soul. 

Pitiably she stammered, “Why it — it was 
understood, was it not? You cared — you — 
you ” 

She could not put into words the memories 
that beset her stricken consciousness. But the 
cheeks that had felt his kiss flamed with a 
sudden burning scarlet. 

“What was understood?” said Johnny Byrd. 
“That I was going to marry you — because I 
kissed you?” And with that dreadful hostile 
grimness he insisted, “You knew darned well 
I wasn’t proposing to you.” 

143 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


What did he mean? Had not every action 
of his been an affirmation of their relation? 
Did he believe she was one to whom men acted 
lightly? Had he never meant to propose to 
her, never meant to marry? 

Last night at the dance — this afternoon in 
the woods — what had he meant by all his ad- 
miration and his boldness ? 

And that evening on the mountain, when, 
with his arm around her, he had murmured 
that he would take care of her. . . . Had he 
meant nothing by it, nothing, except the casual 
insolent intimacy which a man would grant a 
ballerina? 

Or was he now turning from her in dreadful 
abandonment because after this scandal she 
would be too conspicuous to make it agreeable 
to carry out the intentions — perhaps only the 
vaguely realized intentions — of the past? 

But why then, why had he kissed her on the 
mountain? 

Utter terror beset her. Her voice shook so 
144 


JOHNNY BECOMES EXPLICIT 


that the words dropped almost incoherently 
from the quivering lips. 

“But if not — if not — Oh, you must know 
that now — now it is imperative !” 

Shameful beseeching — shameful that she 
should have to beseech. Where was his man- 
hood, his chivalry — where his compassion? 

“Imperative nuts! You don’t mean to say 
you’re trying to make me marry you because 
we got lost in the woods ?” 

Desperately the girl struggled for dignity. 

“It is the least you could do, Signor. Even 
if — if you had not cared ” 

Her voice broke again. 

“You little nut.” Johnny’s tones had al- 
tered. More mildly he went on, “I don’t quite 
get you, Ri-Ri, and I don’t think you get me. 
It isn’t up to me to do any marrying, if that’s 
honestly what’s worrying you. And I’m not 
going to be stampeded, if that’s what you’re 
trying to do. . . . Our reputations will have 
to stand it.” 

And this, Maria Angelina despairingly re- 
145 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


called, was the man who had kissed her, had 
watched the moon rise with his arm about her, 
promising her his protection. . . . Wildly she 
wished that she had died before she had come 
to this — a thing lightly regarded and repudi- 
ated. 

It was horrible to plead to him but the panic 
of her plight drove her on. 

“Reputations !” she said chokingly. “Yours 
can stand it, perhaps — but what of me? You 
cannot be serious, you cannot ! Why, it is my 
name, my life, my everything! . . . You made 
me come this way. Always I wanted you to go 
another way, but no, you were sure, you told me 
to trust; to you. And then you pretended to 
care for me — do you think I would have toler- 
ated your arm about me for one instant if I 
had not believed it was forever? Oh, if my 
father were here you would talk differently! 
Have you no honor? None? . . . Every one 
knew there was an — an affair of the heart 
growing between us, and then for us two to 

disappear — this night alone ” 

146 


JOHNNY BECOMES EXPLICIT 


Her voice kept breaking off. She could not 
control it or the tears that ran down her face 
in the darkness. She was a choking, crying 
wild thing. 

Desperately she forced one last insistence, 
“Oh, you must, you must !” 

“Must nothing/’ Byrd answered her sav- 
agely. “What kind of scheme is this, anyhow? 
I’ve had a few things tried before but this 
beats the Dutch. I don’t know how much of 
this talk you mean but I’ll tell you right now, 
young lady, nobody can tie me up for life with 
any such stuff. Father! Honor! Scandal! 
Believe me, little one, you’ve got the wrong 
number.” 

“You mean — you dare refuse?” 

“You bet I dare refuse. There’s no sense to 
all this. Nobody’s going to think the worse of 
you because you got lost with me — and if 
you’re trying to put anything over, you might 
as well stop now.” 

Maria Angelina stopped. It seemed to her 
that she should die of shame. 

147 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


Dazedly she stood and looked at him through 
the darkness out of which a few drops of rain 
were again falling. 

“You just forget it and get a bit of rest,” 
Johnny Byrd advised brusquely. “Hurry in 
out of the wet. That thing's going to leak 
again,” and he nodded jerkily up at the sky. 

He tugged open the door, and stricken as 
a wounded creature crawling to shelter Maria 
Angelina bent her head and stumbled across 
the threshold. 

“In you go,” he said with a more cheerful 
air. “Wrap yourself up as warm as you can 
and I'll follow ” 

She was within the doorway when these 
words came. She turned and saw that he was 
stooping to enter. 

“I shall do quite well, Signor,” she found 
her voice quickly to say. “You need not come 
in.” 

“Need not ?” He appeared caught with 

fresh amazement. “Judas, where do you think 
I'm going to stay? Out in the rain?” 

148 


JOHNNY BECOMES EXPLICIT 


“Certainly not in here, Signor.” 

Desperation lent Maria Angelina sudden 
fire. “You must be mad, Signor !” she told him 
fiercely. 

“And you madder. You don't think I'm go- 
ing to stay” — he jerked his head backward — 
“out in the wet?” 

“But naturally. You are a man. It is your 
place.” 

“My place — you little Wop! A man! I'd 
be a dead one.” The words of a humorous 
lecturer smote his memory and with harsh mer- 
riment he quoted, “ 'Good-night, Miss Middle- 
ton, said I, as I buttoned her carefully into 
her tent and went out to sleep upon a cactus.' 
. . . None of that stuff for mine,” and without 
more ado Johnny Byrd lowered his head to 
pass under the doorway. 

There was a gasp from the interior. 

“Ri-Ri, listen to me!” he demanded upon 
the threshold. “You're raving — loco — nuts! 
There’s no harm in my huddling under the 
same roof with you — it’s a damn necessity. 

149 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


Fm not going to hold hands and I’m not going 
to kiss you. If you’ve got any drawn swords 
you can lay their blades between us. You turn 
your face to the wall and forget all about it 
and I’ll do the same.” 

“Signor, stay without!” 

“Got a dagger in your garter ? . . . Ri-Ri, 
listen to me. You’re absolutely wrong in the 
head. Be sensible. Have a heart. I’m going 
to get some rest.” 

“It does not matter what you say or what 
you intend. You do not need to reassure me 
that you will not kiss me, Signor. That will 
not happen again.” Maria Angelina’s voice 
was like ice. “But you are not coming within 
this place.” 

Tensely she confronted him. He loomed be- 
fore her as a wolfish brute, seeking his comfort 
at this last cost of her pride. . . . But no man, 
she thought tragically, should ever say that he 
had spent the night within the same four walls. 

She sprang forward, her hands outstretched, 
then shrank back 

ISO 


JOHNNY BECOMES EXPLICIT 


She could not touch him. Not only the per- 
ception of the ludicrous folly of matching her 
strength against his withheld her, but some 
flaming fury against putting a hand upon a 
man who had so repudiated her. 

Her brain grew alert. Suddenly very intent 
and collected she stepped aside and Johnny 
Byrd came in. 

Close to the wall she pressed, edging nearer 
and nearer the door, and as he stumbled and 
fumbled with the blankets she gave a quick 
spring and flashed out. 

Like mad she ran across the clearing, 
through a thicket, and out again and away. 

On the instant he was after her; she heard' 
his steps crashing behind her but she had the 
start of her swiftness and the speed of her des- 
peration. Brambles meant nothing to her, nor 
the thickets nor branches. She flew on and on, 
lost in the darkness, his shouts growing fainter 
and fainter in her ears. 

At last, in a shrub, she stopped to listen. 
She could hear nothing. Then came a call — 

151 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


very faint. It came from the wrong direction. 
She had turned and doubled like a hare and 
Johnny was pursuing, if he still pursued, a mis- 
taken way. 

She was safe . . . and she stood still for a 
few minutes to quiet her pounding heart and 
catch her gasping breath, and then she stole 
out, cautiously, anxiously hurrying, to make 
her own way down. 

She had no idea of time or of distance. 
Vaguely she felt that it was the middle of the 
night but that if she were quick, very quick, 
she might reach the Lodge before it was too 
disastrously late. She might meet a searching 
party out for them — there would be searching 
parties if people were truly worried at their 
absence. 

Of course if they thought it an elopement, 
they might not take that trouble. They might 
be merely waiting and conjecturing. 

If only Cousin Jim had not returned to New 
York! He was so kind and concerned that 
he would be searching. There would be a 

152 


JOHNNY BECOMES EXPLICIT 


chance of his understanding. But Cousin 
Jane — what would she believe? 

Cousin Jane had seen Johnny draw her sig- 
nificantly back. 

At her folly of the afternoon she looked 
back with horror. How bold she had been in 
that new American freedom! Mamma had 
warned her — dear Mamma so far away, so in- 
nocent of this terrible disgrace. . . . 

Wildly she plunged on through the dark, 
hoping always for a path but finding nothing 
but rough wilderness. She knew no landmarks 
to guide her, but down she went determinedly, 
down, down continually. 

An hour had passed. Perhaps two hours. 
The sky had grown blacker and blacker. There 
were occasional gusts of rain. The wind that 
had been threshing the tree tops blew with in- 
creasing fury. 

Jagged tridents of lightning flashed before 
her eyes. Thunder followed almost instantly, 
great crashing peals that seemed to be rend- 
ing the heavens. 


153 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


Maria Angelina felt as if the splinters must 
fall upon her. It was like the voice of judg- 
ment. 

On she went, down, down, through a dark- 
ness that was chaos lit by lightning. Rain 
came, in a torrent of water, heavy as lead, 
drenching her to the skin. Her hair had 
streamed loose and was plastered about her 
face, her throat, her arms. A strand like a 
wet rope wound about her wrist and delayed 
her. Often she slipped and fell. 

Still down. But if she should find the 
Lodge, what then? What would they think of 
her, wet, torn, disheveled, an outcast of the 
night? 

She sobbed aloud as she went. She, who had 
come to America so proudly, so confidently of 
glad fortune, who had thought the world a 
fairy tale and believed that she had found its 
prince — what place on earth would there be 
for her after this, disgraced and ashamed? 

They would ship her back to Mamma at 
once. And the scandal would travel with her, 
154 


JOHNNY BECOMES EXPLICIT 


whispered by tourists, blazoned by newspapers. 

And her family had so counted upon her! 
They had looked for such great things! 

Now she had utterly blackened their name, 
tarnished them all forever with her disrepute. 
Poor Julietta’s hopes would be ruined. . . . 
No one would want a Santonini. . . . Lucia 
would be furious. The Tostis might even re- 
pudiate her — certainly they would inflict their 
condescension. 

She could only disappear, hide in some nurs- 
ing sisterhood. 

So ran her wild thoughts as she scrambled 
down these endless mountain sides. All the 
black fears that she had fought off earlier in 
the evening by her belief in Johnny’s devotion 
were upon her now like a pack of wolves. She 
wished that she could die at once and be out of 
it, yet when she heard the sudden wash of 
water, almost under her feet, she jumped aside 
and screamed. 

A river ! In the night it looked wider than 
155 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


that one they had followed that afternoon but 
i'c might only be another part of it. 

Very wearily she made her way along the 
bank, so mortally tired that it seemed as if 
every step must be her last. There was no un- 
derbrush to struggle with now, for she had 
come to a grove of pines and their fallen 
needles made a carpet for her lagging feet. 

The rain was nearly over, but she was too 
wet and too cold to take comfort in that. 

More and more laggingly she went and at 
last, when a hidden root tripped her, she made 
no effort to rise, but lay prostrate, her cheek 
upon her outflung arm, and yielded to the 
dark, drowsy oblivion that stole numbingly 
over her. 

She would be glad, she thought, never to 
wake. 


CHAPTER IX 


MRS. BLAIR REGRETS 

I T had taken a long time for concern to 
spread among the picnickers. 

The sudden shower had sent them all 
scurrying for shelter, and when the climb was 
resumed, they crossed the river on those wide, 
flat stepping-stones that Johnny Byrd had 
missed, and re-formed in self-absorbed little 
twos and threes that failed to take note of 
the absence of the laggards. 

When Ruth remembered to call back, 
“Where’s Ri-Ri?” to her mother, Mrs. Blair 
only glanced over her shoulder and answered, 
“She’s coming,” with no thought of anxiety. 

It did occur to her, however, somewhat 
later, that the girl was loitering a little too 
significantly with young Byrd, and she made 
157 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


a point of suggesting to Ruth, when she passed 
her in a short time, that she wait for her cousin 
who was probably finding the climb too strenu- 
ous. 

“Who? Me?” said Ruth amazedly. “Gee, 
what do*you want me to do — fan her? Let 
Johnny do it,” and cheerfully she went on 
photographing a group upon a fallen log, and 
Mrs. Blair went on with the lawyer from 
Washington who was a rapid walker. 

And Ruth, with the casual thought that 
neither Ri-Ri nor Johnny Byrd would relish 
such attendance, promptly let the thought of 
them dissolve from her memory. 

She was immersed in her own particular 
world that afternoon. 

Life was at a crisis for her. Robert Martin 
had been drifting faster and faster with the 
current of his admiration for her, and now 
seemed to have been brought up on very def- 
inite solid ground. He felt he knew where 
he was. And he wanted to know where Ruth 
was. 

158 


MRS. BLAIR REGRETS 


And Ruth found herself in that special quan- 
dary reserved for independent American girls 
who want to have their cake and eat it, too. 

She wanted Bob Martin, and she wanted to 
be gratifyingly sure that Bob Martin wanted 
her — and then she wanted affairs to stand still 
at that pleasant pass, while she played about 
and invited adventure. 

Life was so desirable as it was ... es- 
pecially with Bob Martin in the scene. But if 
he were unsatisfied he wouldn’t remain there 
as part of the adjacent landscape. 

Bob was no pursuing Lochinvar. 

It was very delicate. She couldn’t explain 
all her hesitation satisfactorily to herself, so 
she had made rather a poor job of it when she 
tried to explain to Bob. 

Part of it was young unreadiness for the 
decisions and responsibilities of life, part of it 
was reprehensible aversion about shutting the 
door to other adventures, and part of it was 
her native energy, as yet unemployed, aware 
159 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


of a larger world and anxious to play some un- 
divined part in its destinies. 

She had always been furious that the war 
had come too soon for her. She would have 
loved to have gone over there, and known the 
mud and doughnuts and doughboys . . . and 
the excitement and the officers. . . . 

But Bob wasn’t going to dangle much longer. 
He hadn’t a doubt but that everything was all 
right and he was in haste to taste the assur- 
ance. 

And Ruth wasn’t going to lose him. 

These hesitations of hers would convey 
nothing to his youthful masculinity but that 
she didn’t care enough. And his was not the 
age that appreciates the temporizing half loaf. 

So that trip up the mountain meant for them 
much youthful discussion, much searching of 
wills and hearts and motives, a threatening 
gloom upon his part, and a struggling defen- 
siveness upon hers. 

Small wonder that Maria Angelina and her 
companion were not remembered ! 

160 


MRS. BLAIR REGRETS 


It was not until she was at the very top of 
old Baldy, and again a part of the general 
group that Ruth had the thought to look about 
her and recognize her cousin’s absence. 

“They are taking their time,” she remarked 
to Bob. 

“Glad they’re enjoying it,” he gave back 
with a disgruntled air that Ruth determinedly 
ignored. 

“I guess Ri-Ri’s no good at a climb,” she 
said. “This little old mountain must have got 
her.” 

“Oh, Johnny’s strong right arm will do the 
work,” he returned indifferently. 

“But they ought to be here now. You don’t 
suppose they missed the way?” Mrs. Blair, 
overhearing, suggested, and turned to look 
down the steep path that they had come. 

Bob scouted the idea of such a mishap. 

“Johnny knows his way about. They’ll be 
along when they feel like it,” he predicted 
easily, and Mrs. Blair turned to the arrange- 
161 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


ment of supper with a slight anxiety which she 
dissembled beneath casual cheerfulness. 

In her heart she was vexed. Dreadfully 
noticeable, she thought, that persistent lagging 
of theirs. She might have expected it of 
Johnny Byrd — he had a way of making new 
girls conspicuous — but she had looked for bet- 
ter things from Maria Angelina. 

It was too bad. It showed that as soon as 
you gave those cloistered girls an inch they 
took an ell. 

Outwardly she spoke with praise of her 
charge. Julia Martin, a youthful aunt of 
Bob’s, was curious about the girl. 

“She’s the loveliest creature,” she declared 
with facile enthusiasm, as she and Mrs. Blair 
delved into a hamper that the Martins’ chauf- 
feur and butler had shouldered up before the 
picnickers. 

“And so naively young — I don’t see how her 
mother dared let her come so far away.” 

“Oh — her mother wanted her to see Amer- 
ica,” Mrs. Blair gave back. 


MRS. BLAIR REGRETS 


“She must be having a wonderful time/* 
pursued the young lady. “She was simply a 
picture at the dance. . . . Think of giving a 
mountain climb the night after the dance/’ 
she added in a lower voice. “Bob and his 
mother are perfectly mad. I think they want 
to kill their guests off — perhaps there’s method 
in their madness. ... I never saw anything 
quite like her,” she resumed upon Maria An- 
gelina. “I fancy Johnny Byrd hasn’t either!” 

“Wasn’t she pretty?” agreed Mrs. Blair with 
pleasantness, laying out the spoons. “Yes, it’s 
very interesting for her to have this,” she went 
on, “before she really knows Roman society. 
. . . She will come out as soon as she returns 
from America, I suppose. The eldest sister is 
being married this fall, and the next sister and 
Maria Angelina are about of an age.” 

“Little hard on the sister unless she is a rav- 
ing, tearing beauty,” said the intuitive Miss 
Martin with a laugh. “Perhaps they are send- 
ing Maria Angelina away to keep her in abey- 
ance !” 


163 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“Perhaps,” Mrs. Blair assented. “At any 
rate, with this preliminary experience, I fancy 
that little Ri-Ri will make quite a sensation 
over there.” 

It was as if she said plainly to the curious 
young aunt that this pilgrimage was only a 
prelude in Maria Angelina’s career, and she 
certainly did not take its possibilities for any 
serious finalities. 

But the youthful aunt was not intimidated. 

“She’ll make a sensation over here if she 
carries off the Byrd millions,” she threw out 
smartly. 

Mrs. Blair smiled with an effect of remote 
amusement. Inwardly she knew sharp annoy- 
ance. She wished she could smack that loiter- 
ing child. . . . Very certainly she would be- 
tray no degrading interest in her fortunes. 
The Martins were not to think that she was in- 
tent on placing any one! 

“Johnny Byrd’s a child,” said she indiffer- 
ently. 

“He’s been of age two years,” said the 
164 


MRS. BLAIR REGRETS 


youthful aunt, “and he’s out of college now 
and very much a catch — all his vacations used 
to be hairbreadth escapes. Of course he courts 
danger,” she threw in with a little laugh and 
a sidelong look. 

But Mrs. Blair was not laughing. She was 
blaming herself for the negligence which had 
made this situation possible, although — exten- 
uation made haste to add within her — no one 
could humanly be expected to be going up and 
down a trail all afternoon to gather in the 
stragglers. And she had told Ruth to wait. 

“She’s probably just tired out,” said the 
stout widower with strong accents of sym- 
pathy. “Climb too much for her, and very 
sensibly they’ve turned back.” 

“If I could only be sure. If I could only be 
sure she wasn’t hurt — or lost,” said Mrs. Blair 
doubtfully. 

“Lost!” Bob Martin derided. “Lost — on a 
straight trail. Not unless they jolly wanted 
to!” 

“Don’t spoil the party, mother,” was Ruth’s 

165 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


edged advice. “Ri-Ri hasn’t broken any legs 
or necks. And she wasn’t alone to get lost. 
She just gave up and Johnny Byrd took her 
home. I know her foot was blistered at the 
dance last night and that’s probably the mat- 
ter.” 

It was the explanation they decided to adopt. 

Mrs. Blair, recalling that this was not her ex- 
pedition, made a double duty of appearing sen- 
sibly at ease, although the nervous haste with 
which a sudden noise would bring her to alert- 
ness, facing the path, revealed some inner ten- 
sion. 

The young people were inclined to be hila- 
rious over the affair, inventing fresh reasons 
for the absent ones, reasons that ranged from 
elopement to wood pussies. 

“There was one around last night,” the ten- 
nis champion insisted. 

But the hilarity was only a flash in the pan. 
After its flare the party dragged. Curiosity 
preoccupied some; uneasiness communicated 
itself to others. And the frank abstraction of 
1 66 


MRS. BLAIR REGRETS 


Ruth and Bob had a depressing effect upon the 
atmosphere. 

And the runaways were missed. Johnny 
Byrd had an infectious way of making a party 
go and Maria Angelina’s sweet soprano had 
become so much a part of every gathering that 
its absence now made song a dejection. 

Other things of Maria Angelina than her 
soprano were missed, also. 

Julia Martin found the popular bachelor de- 
cidedly absent-minded. The crack young polo 
player thought the scenery disappointing. De- 
cidedly, it was a dull party. 

And the weather was threatening. 

So after supper had been disposed of and 
there had been a bonfire and an effort at sing- 
ing about it, a dispirited silence spread until a 
decent interval was felt to have elapsed and 
allowed the suggestion of return. 

Once it was suggested everybody seemed 
ready for the start, even without the moon, for 
the path was fairly clear and the men had 
pocket flashlights, so down in the dark they 
167 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


started, proceeding cautiously and gingerly, 
and accumulating mental reservations about 
mountains and mountain climbing until the 
moon suddenly overtook them and sent a sil- 
vering wash of light into the valley at their 
feet. 

They had gained the main path before the 
moon deserted them, and the first of the gusty 
showers sent them hurrying along in shivering 
impatience for the open fires of homes. 

“We’ll find that pair of short sports toasting 
their toes and giving us the laugh,” predicted 
Bob, tramping along, a hand on Ruth’s arm 
now. 

Ruth was wearing his huge college sweater 
over her silk one and felt indefinably less ad- 
venturous and independent than on her upward 
trip. Bob seemed very stable, very desirable, 
as she stumbled wearily on. She wasn’t quite 
sure what she had wanted to gain time for, 
that afternoon. Already the barriers of cus- 
tom and common-sense were raising their solid 
heads. 


1 68 


MRS. BLAIR REGRETS 


And Bob was romance, too. It was silly to 
be unready for surrender. She realized that if 
she lost him . . . 

At the Lodge she gave him back a quick look 
that set him astir. 

“Hold on,” he called as she broke from him 
to follow her mother. 

The cars from the Martin house party had 
been left at the Lodge in readiness and with 
perfunctory warmth of farewells the tired 
mountaineers were hastening either to the 
Lodge or the motors. 

“Here's Johnny's car,” he sung out. “He's 

probably inside ” and Bob swung hastily 

after Ruth and her mother. 

He was up the steps beside them and opened 
the door into the wide hall where a group was 
lingering about the open fire. 

A glance told them Johnny Byrd was not of 
the company. Bob and Ruth went to the door 
of the music room. It was deserted. Mrs. 
Blair went swiftly to the clerk's desk at the 
side entrance. 

169 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


She came back, looking upset. Maria An- 
gelina had not returned, to the clerk’s knowl- 
edge. No one had telephoned any news. 

‘Til go up and make sure,” offered Ruth, 
and sped up the stairs only to return in a few 
minutes with a face of dawning excitement. 

“They must be lost!” she announced in a* 
voice that drew instant attention. 

“Did you look to see if her things were 
there?” said her mother in an agitated under- 
tone. 

Bob Martin met her glance with swift intel- 
ligence. 

“Johnny’s car is out there,” he told them. 
“It isn’t that — they are simply lost, as Ruth 
says. Wait — I must tell them before they get 
away,” and he hurried out into the increasing 
downpour. 

Mrs. Blair turned on her daughter a face of 
pale misgiving. 

“I knew it,” she said direfully. “I felt it all 
along. . . . She’s lost.” 

“Well, she’ll be found,” said Ruth lightly, 
170 


MRS. BLAIR REGRETS 


with an indisputable lift of excitement. “The 
bears won’t eat them. ,, 

Mrs. Blair’s eyes shifted uneasily to meet 
the advancing circle from the fire. 

“There are worse bites than bears’,” she 
found time to throw out, before she had to 
voice the best possible version of Maria An- 
gelina’s disappearance. 

Instantly a babble of facile comfort rose. 

They would be here any moment now. 

Some one had picked them up — they were 
safe and sound, this instant. 

There wasn’t a thing that could happen — it 
wasn’t as though these were wilds. 

Just telephone about — she mustn’t worry. 
As soon as it was light some one would go out 
and track them. 

Why, Judge Carney’s boys had been lost all 
night and breakfasted on blueberries. It 
wasn’t uncommon. 

And nothing could happen to her — with 
Johnny Byrd along. 

171 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


Oh, Johnny would take care of her — by 
morning everything would be all right. 

But how in the world had it happened? That 
was such an easy trail ! 

And that was the question that stared, Ar- 
gus-eyed, at Jane Blair. It was the question, 
she knew, that they were all asking themselves 
— and the others — in covert curiosity. 

What had happened? And how had it hap- 
pened? 


CHAPTER X 


FANTASY 

S HE awoke to fright — some great hairy 
beast of the forest was nosing her. 
Then a light flashed in her eyes, and 
as she closed them, drifting off to exhaustion 
again, she half saw a figure stooping towards 
her. Then she felt herself being carried, while 
a barking seemed to be all about her. 

The next thing she knew was light forcing 
its brightness through her closed lids and a 
great warmth beating upon her. 

She dragged her eyes open again. She was 
lying on a black bear skin rug before a roaring 
fire, and some one was kneeling beside her, 
tucking cushions beneath her head. She had a 
glimpse of a khaki sleeve and a lean brown 
wrist. 

The warmth was delicious. She wanted to 

173 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


put her head back against those pillows and 
sleep forever but memory was rousing, too. 

Sleepily, she mumbled, “What time is it?” 

The khaki shirt sleeve had withdrawn from 
view and the answering voice came from a cor- 
ner of the room. 

“It’s about two.” 

Two o'clock! The night gone- — gone past 
redemption. 

“Oh, Madre mia!” whispered Maria An- 
gelina. 

She struggled up on one elbow, her little 
face, scratched and stained, staring wildly out 
from the dark thicket cl hair. “But where am 
I? Where is this place? Is it near the Lodge 
— near Wilderness Lodge?” 

“We're miles from Wilderness,” said the 
voice out of the shadows. “This is Old Chief 
Mountain — on the Little Pine River.” 

Old Chief Mountain! Vaguely Maria An- 
gelina recalled that stony peak, far behind Old 
Baldy. . . . They had climbed the wrong 
174 


FANTASY 


mountain, indeed. . . . And she had plunged 
farther away, in her headlong flight. 

She stared about her. She saw a huge fire- 
place where the flames were dancing. Above 
it, on a wide mantel, was a disarray of books, 
cigar-boxes, pipes and papers, the papers 
weighted oddly with a jar of obviously pickled 
frogs. 

Upon the log walls several fishing rods were 
stretched on nails and a gun, a corn-popper, a 
rough coat and cap and a fishing net were all 
hung on neighboring hooks. 

It was the cabin of some woodsman, and 
she seemed alone in it with the woodsman and 
his dog, a tawny collie — the wild animal of 
her awakening. Quietly alert, he lay now 
beside her, his grave, bright eyes upon her 
face. 

The woodsman she could not see. 

“Now see if you can drink all of this.” 
The khaki sleeve had appeared from the shad- 
ows and was holding a steaming cup to her 
lips. 


175 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


It was a huge cup made of granite ware. 
Obediently Maria Angelina drank. The con- 
tents were scalding hot and while her throat 
seemed blistered the warmth penetrated her 
veins in quick reaction. 

“Lucky I didn't empty my coffeepot,” said 
the voice cheerfully. “There it was — waiting 
to be heated. Memorandum — never wash a 
coffeepot." 

The voice seemed coming to her out of a 
dream. Thrusting back the tangled hair from 
her eyes Maria Angelina lifted them incredu- 
lously to the woodsman's face. 

Was it true? . . . Those clear, sharp-cut 
features, those bright, keen eyes with the gay 
smile! . . . Was it true — or was she dream- 
ing? 

Instinctively she dropped her hand and let 
her hair like a black curtain shield her face. 
The blood seemed to stand still in her veins 
waiting that dreadful instant of recognition. 

Confusedly, with some frantic thought of 

flight, “I must go — Oh, I must go " 

176 


FANTASY 


She sat up, still hiding, like Godiva, in her 
hair. 

“You lie down and rest,” said the authori- 
tative voice. “If there's any going to be done 
I’ll do it. Is there some other Babe in the 
Woods to be found?” 

“Oh, no — no, but I must go ” 

“You get a good rest. You can tell me all 
about it and who you are when you're dry and 
warm.” 

She yielded to the compulsion in his voice 
and to her own weakness, and lay very still 
and inert, her cheek upon her outflung arm, 
her eyes watching the red dance of flames 
through the black strands of her hair. It was 
the final irony, she felt, of that dreadful night. 
To meet Barry Elder again — like this — after 
all her dreams 

It was too terrible to be true. 

And he did not know her. He had come to 
that place of his, in the Adirondacks, of which 
he had spoken, and had never given her a 
thought. He had never come to see her. . . 
177 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 

A great wave of mortification surged over 
Maria Angelina, bearing a medley of images, 
of thoughts, of old hopes — like the wash from 
some sinking ship. What a fool of hope she 
had been ! How vain and silly and credulous ! 
. . . She had dreamed of this man, sung to 
the thought of him — quickened to absurd ex- 
pectancy at every stir of the wheels. . . . And 
then she had pictured him at the seashore, 
beneath the spell of that gold-haired siren — 
and here he was, quite near and free — utterly 
unremembering! 

She had suffered many pangs of mortifica- 
tion this night but now her poor, shamed spirit 
bled afresh. 

But perhaps he had just come. And cer- 
tainly he would remember to come and see his 
friends, the Blairs, and possibly he would re- 
member that foreign cousin of theirs that he 
had danced with — just remember her with 
pleasant friendliness. She would give herself 
so much of balm. 

And who indeed was she for Barry Elder to 
178 


FANTASY 


remember ? Just a very young, very silly goose 
of a girl, a little foreigner . . . some one to 
nickname and pet carelessly ... a girl who 
had been good enough for Johnny Byrd to 
make love to but not good enough for him to 
marry. . . . 

A girl who had thrown her name recklessly 
to the winds and who, to-morrow, would be a 
byword. . . . 

These thoughts ached in her with her 
bruised flesh. 

Meanwhile Barry Elder had been making 
quick trips about the room and now he threw 
down an armful of garments beside her and 
knelt at her feet, tugging at her sopping shoes. 

“Let me get these off — there, that’s better. 
Now the other one. . . . Lordy, child, those 
footies. . . . Now you’d better get into these 
dry things as quick as you can. Not a perfect 
fit, but the best I can do. I’ll take a turn in the 
woods and be back in ten minutes. So you 
hurry up.” 

He closed the door upon the words that Ma- 
179 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


ria Angelina was beginning to frame and left 
her looking helplessly at a pair of corduroy 
knickerbockers, a blue flannel shirt, a strange 
undergarment, plaid golf stockings and a pair 
of fringed moccasins. 

They were in an untouched heap when her 
host returned, letting in a cold rush of the night 
with him. 

“What’s this ?” he flung out in mock sever- 
ity. “See here, young lady, you must get into 
those clothes whether they happen to be the 
style or not! Little girls who get wet can’t 
go to sleep in their clothes. Now I’ll give you 
just ten minutes more and then if you are not a 
good girl ” 

To her own dismay and to his Maria An- 
gelina burst into tears. 

“Oh, come now,” said Barry helplessly. 
“You poor little dud ” 

The sudden gentleness of his voice undid the 
last of the girl’s control. She sobbed harder 
and harder as he sat down beside her and be- 
gan to pat her shaking shoulders. 

180 


FANTASY 


“You shan’t do anything you don’t want to,” 
he comforted. “You’re tired out, I know. But 
you’d be so much more comfy in these dry 
togs ” 

“Oh, please, Signor, not those things. Do 
not make me. I will get dry ” 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” 
he told her gently, looking down in a puzzled 
way at her distress. Her face was buried in 
a crook of her arm; her black hair streamed 
tempestuously over her heaving shoulders. 
“Come closer to the fire, then, and dry out.” 

He threw more wood upon the flames and 
piled on brush that shed a swift, crackling heat. 

“Give that a chance at those wet clothes of 
yours,” he advised. “Meanwhile we’d better 
wring this out,” and with businesslike de- 
spatch he began gathering that dripping black 
hair into the folds of a Turkish towel. Very 
strenuously he wrung it. 

“That’s what I do for my kid sister when 
she’s been in swimming,” he mentioned. “She’s 
at the seashore now — no getting her away 
181 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


from the water. She’s a bigger girl than you 
are. . . . Now when you feel better suppose 
you tell me all about it. Did you say you came 
from Wilderness Lodge?” 

“Yes,” said Maria Angelina half whisper- 
ingly. 

Had he no memory of her at all? Or was 
she so different in that wet, muddied blouse, 
hair streaming, and face scratched — she 
looked down at her grimy little hands and 
wondered dumbly what her face might look 
like. 

And then she saw that Barry Elder, having 
finished with her hair, was preparing to wash 
her face, for he brought a granite basin of hot 
water and began wetting and soaping the end 
of a voluminous towel with which he advanced 
upon her. 

“I can well wash myself,” she cried with 
promptness, and most thoroughly she washed 
and scrubbed, and then hung her head as he 
took away the things. 

She felt as if a screening mask had fallen 
182 


FANTASY 


and her only thought now was to make an 
escape before discovery should add one more 
humiliation to this night of shames. 

“You are very good ,” she said shyly. “I 
cannot tell you how I thank you. And I feel 
so much better that if you will please let me 


“Go? To Wilderness Lodge? It’s miles and 
miles, child — and it's pouring cats and dogs 
again. Don’t you hear the drumsticks on the 
roof?” 

She hesitated. “Then — have you a tele- 
phone?” 

“No, thank the Lord!” The remembered 
laughter flashed in Barry Elder’s tones. “I 
came here to get away from the devil of in- 
vention and all his works. There isn’t a tele- 
phone nearer than Peter’s place — four miles 
away. I’ll go over for you as soon as it’s 
light, for I expect your mother’s worrying her 
head off about you. How did you ever happen 
to get lost over here ?” 

Helplessly Maria Angelina sought for 

183 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


words. Silence was ungrateful but there 
seemed nothing she could say. 

“It was on a picnic — please do not ask me,” 
she whispered foolishly. 

In humorous perplexity the young man stood 
looking down upon the small figure that chance 
had deposited so unexpectedly upon his hearth, 
a most forlorn and drooping small figure, with 
downcast and averted head, then with that 
sudden smile that made his young face so 
brightly persuasive he dropped beside her and 
reached towards her. 

“Here, little kiddie, you come and sit with 
me while I warm those feet of yours ” 

Swiftly she withdrew from his kindly reach- 
ing hands. 

“Signor, it is not fitting that you should hold 
me, that you should warm my feet,” she 
gasped. “I am not a child, Signor !” 

Signor . . . The word waked some echo in 
his mind. . . . The child had used it before — 
but what connection was groping ? 

He repeated the word aloud. 

184 


FANTASY 


“You do not recall ?” said Maria Angelina 
chokingly. “Though indeed, there is no rea- 
son why you should. It was but for a mo- 
ment ” 

She glanced up to see recognition leap 
amazedly into his face. 

“The little Signorina! The Blairs’ little 
Signorina !” 

“Maria Angelina Santonini,” she told him 
soberly. “Yes, that is I.” 

“Why of course I remember,” he insisted. 
“A little girl in a white dress. A big hat which 
you took off. Your first night in America. 
We had a wonderful dance together ” 

“And you said you would come to the moun- 
tains,” she told him childishly. 

He stared a moment. “Why, so I did. . . . 
And here I am. And here you are. To think 
I did not know you — I’ve been wondering 
whom you made me want to think of! But I 
took you for a youngster, you know, a regular 
ten-year-old runaway. Why, with your hair 

185 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


down like that Of course, it was absurd 

of me.” 

He paused with a smile for the absurdity of 
it. 

Gallantly she tried to give him back that 
smile but there was something so wan and 
piteous in the curve of her soft lips, something 
so hurt and sick in the shadows of her dark 
eyes, that Barry Elder felt oddly silenced. 

And then he tried to cover that silence with 
kind chatter as he moved about his room once 
more in hospitable preparation. 

“It was Sandy, here, who really found you,” 
he told her. “He whined at the door till I let 
him out and then he came back, barking, for 
me, so I had to go. I was really looking for 
a mink. Sandy’s always excited about minks.” 

Maria Angelina put a hand to the dog’s 
head and stroked it. 

“I was so tired,” she said. “I think I was 
asleep.” 

“I rather think you were,” said Barry in 
an odd tone. He glanced at her white cheek 
1 86 


FANTASY 


with its scarlet scratch of a branch. “And I 
rather think you ought to be asleep now but 
first you must eat this and drink some more 
coffee.” 

Maria Angelina needed no urging. Like a 
starveling she fell upon that plate of crisp 
bacon and delicately fried eggs and cleaned it 
to the last morsel. 

“I had but two bites of sweet chocolate for 
my dinner,” she apologized. 

“So you were lost before dinner — no wonder 
you were done in.” 

Barry filled a very worn-looking little brown 
pipe with care. “Where were you going, any- 
way, for your picnic?” 

“It was to Old Baldy.” 

“Old Baldy, eh ? Let me see — what trail did 
you take?” 

“On the river path. Then — then we got 
separated ” 

“I see. But it’s a fairly clear trail. Did you 
try another?” 

“We — we crossed the river the wrong time, 

187 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


I think, and so got on the wrong mountain. 
We ” 

Maria Angelina’s voice died away in sudden 
sick perception of that betraying pronoun. 

Quite slowly, without looking at her, Barry 
completed the lighting of that pipe to his satis- 
faction and drew a few appreciative puffs. 
Then he turned to inquire casually, “And who 
is ‘we’?” 

He saw only the top of the girl’s tousled head 
and the tense grip of her clasped hands in her 
lap. 

“If you would not ask, Signor!” she said 
whisperingly. 

“A dark secret!” He tried to laugh over 
that but his keen eyes rested on her with a 
troubled wonder. 

“And then you got lost — even from your 
companion?” he prompted quietly. 

“Yes, I — I came away alone for he — he re- 
fused to go on,” faltered Maria Angelina pain- 
fully, “and then I seemed to go on forever — 
and I could do no more. But now I am quite 
1 88 


FANTASY 


well again,” she insisted with a ghost of a 
brave smile. “If only — if only my Cousin 
Jane could know that I’m trying to get back,” 
she finished in a tone that shook in spite of 
her. 

“You weren’t trying to get lost, were you?” 
questioned Barry lightly, groping for a cue. 
There was no mistaking the flash of Maria 
Angelina’s repudiation and the candor of her 
suddenly upraised young face. 

“Oh, no, Signor, no, no ! It was only that I 
was so careless — that I believed he knew the 
way.” 

“And was he trying to get lost ?” 

“Oh, no, Signor, no, it was all a mistake.” 

“This is a very easy neck of the woods to 
get lost in,” Barry told her reassuringly. “Old 
residents here often miss their way — especially 
in a storm. Mrs. Blair will worry, of course, 
but she is very sensible and she knows you will 
come to light with the daylight. Just as soon 
as it is clear enough for me to find my way I’ll 
strike over to Peter’s place and phone her that 
189 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


you are safe and sound, and Fll get a horse for 
you to ride out on — you won’t care for any 
more walking and the motor can only come as 
far as the road.” 

“But you must not tell them you have found 
me,” said Maria Angelina, overwhelmed with 
tragedy again. She seemed fated, she thought 
in dreadful humor, to spend the night with 
young men ! And to have been lost by one and 
found by another ! 

“It will be so much worse,” she said plead- 
ingly. “Could you not just show me the way 
and let me go ?” 

“So much worse?” His face was very grave 
and gentle. “So much worse? I don’t think I 
understand.” 

“So very much worse. To have been found 
like this — Oh, promise me to say nothing about 
it. I know that I can trust you.” 

“I think you had better tell me all about it, 
Signorina.” 

He saw that dark misery, like a film, swim 
blindingly over her wide eyes. 

190 


FANTASY 


“I cannot.” 

He considered a moment before he spoke 
again. 

“If you really do not want any one to know 
that I found you I am willing to hold my 
tongue. But don’t you see what a lot of ridicu- 
lous deception that would involve? You would 
have to make up all sorts of little things. And 
then, after all, you’d be sure to say something 
— one always does — and let it all out ” 

Maria Angelina looked at him pathetically 
and a sudden impulse stabbed him to say hasti- 
ly, “I’ll fall in with any plan you want to make. 
Only wait to decide until you feel rested. Then 
perhaps we can decide together. . . . And now, 
if you are really getting dry ” 

“Truly, I am, Signor Elder. I am indeed 
dry and hot.” 

“Then you’d better make up your mind to 
curl up on that cot over there and sleep.” 

“I couldn’t sleep.” 

There was truth beneath Maria Angelina’s 
quick disclaimer. Exhausted as she was, her 
IQI 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


mind was vividly awake, now, excited with the 
strangeness of her presence there. 

Her mortification at his finding her was 
gone. He was so rarely kind, so pleasantly 
matter of fact. He was as gayly undisturbed 
as if the heavens rained starving young girls 
upon him every night ! And somehow she had 
'known he was like this . . . but he was like 
no one else that she had known. . . . 

Her mind groped for a comparison. For 
an instant she vainly tried to picture Paolo 
Tosti doing the honors to such a guest — but 
that picture was unpaintable. 

This Barry Elder was chivalry itself; he 
was kindness and comfort— and he was a 
strange, stirring excitement that flung a gla- 
mour over the disaster of the hour. 

It was like a little hush before the final 
storm, a dim dream before the nightmare en- 
folded her again. 

Her eyes followed him as he turned out the 
kerosene lamp, which was sputtering, and 
flung fresh logs upon the hearty fire. Over- 
192 


FANTASY 


head the rain droned, like monotonous fingers 
upon a keyboard, and beside her Sandy slept 
noisily, with sudden whimpers. 

Barry's eyes, meeting the wistful dark ones, 
smiled responsively, and Maria Angelina felt 
a queer tightening within her, as if some one 
had tied a band about her heart. 

“You don't have such fires in Italy," he ob- 
served, dropping down upon the rug across 
from her, and refilling that battered pipe of 
his. “I well remember when I ordered a fire 
and the cameraria came in with a bunch of 
twigs." 

Madly Maria Angelina fell upon the revela- 
tion. 

“You have been in Italy!" 

“Oh, more than once! But all before the 
war." 

“And you have been in Rome? Oh, to think 
of that ! But where did you stay? Whom did 
you know there, Signor?" 

Barry grinned. “Head waiters!" 

193 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“You knew no Romans, then? Oh, but that 
was a pity.” 

“I can well believe it, Signorina !” 

“Oh, Rome can be very gay — though I am 
not out in society myself, and know so little. 
. . . What did you do, then? I suppose you 
went to the Forum and the Vatican and the 
Via Appia like all the tourists and drove out 
to the Coliseum by moonlight?” 

Delightedly she laughed as Barry Elder con- 
firmed her account of his activities. 

“Me, I have never seen the Coliseum by 
moonlight,” she reported plaintively, adding 
with eager wistfulness, “And did you buy vio- 
lets on the Spanish Stairs? And throw a 
penny into the Trevi fountain to ensure your 
return ? And do you remember the street that 
turns off left, the Via Poli? From there you 
come quick to my house, the Palazzo Santo- 
nin! ” 

“And do you really live in a palace?” It was 
Barry’s turn to question. “A really truly 
194 


FANTASY 


palace? And is your father a really truly 
prince ?” 

“Nothing so great! He is a count — but of 
a very old family, the Santonini,” Maria An- 
gelina explained with becoming pride. 

“And is your mother of a very old ” 

“My mother is American — the cousin of 
Mrs. Blair. But Mamma has never been back 
in America — she is too devoted to us, is Mam- 
ma, and she has so much to look after for 
Papa. Papa is charming but he does not 
manage.” 

“That makes complications,” said Barry 
gravely. 

Amd Francisco, my brother, is just like him. 
He is always running bills, now that he is in 
the army. And he was so brave in the war 
that Mamma cannot bear to be cross. He 
will have to marry an heiress, that boy,” she 
sighed and Barry Elder’s eyes lighted in 
amusement. 

“How many of you are there?” he wanted 
interestedly to know, and vivaciously Maria 
195 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


Angelina informed him of her sisters, her life, 
her lessons, the rare excursions, the pension at 
the seashore, the engagement of her sister 
Lucia and Paolo Tosti. 

And absorbedly Barry Elder listened, his 
eyes on her changing face. When she paused 
he flung in some question or some anecdote 
of his own times in Italy and Sandy was often 
roused by unseasonable laughter, and thudded 
his tail in sleepy friendliness before dozing off 
to his dreams again. 

Then like a flash, as swiftly as it had come, 
the excited glow of recollection was an extin- 
guished flame, leaving her shivering before a 
nearer memory. 

For Barry Elder asked one question too 
many. He brought the present down upon 
them. 

“And how do you like America ?” he asked. 
“Has it been good fun for you up here?” 

Only the blind could have missed the change 
that came over the girl’s face, blotting out its 
196 


FANTASY 


laughter and etching in queer, startled fear. 

“It has been — very gay,” she stammered. 

Despairingly she asked herself why she still 
tried to hide her story from him since in the 
morning it must all come out. He would know 
all about her then. And what must he be 
thinking already of her stammered evasions? 

Oh, if only on that yesterday, which seemed 
a thousand yesterdays away, she had stayed 
closely by her Cousin Jane ! If she had not let 
her folly wreck all her life! 

Bitterly ironic to know that all the time 
Barry Elder was here, at hand. If only she 
had known! Had he just come? 

She wondered and asked the question. 

And at that Barry's face changed as if he 
had remembered something he would have 
been as glad to forget. 

“Oh — I've been here a few days,” he gave 
back vaguely. 

She glanced about the shadowy room. “So 
alone?” 

A wry smile touched his mouth. “I came for 
197 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


alone-ness. I had a play to write — I wanted to 
work some things out for myself,” and inde- 
finably but certainly Maria Angelina caught 
the impression that all the things he wanted 
to work out for himself in this solitude were 
not connected with his play. 

His linked hands had slipped over his knees 
and he looked ahead of him very steadily into 
the fire, and Maria Angelina had a feeling that 
he looked that way into the fire many evenings, 
so oddly, grimly intent, with oblivious eyes and 
faintly ironic lips. 

He was quiet so long, without moving, that 
she felt as if he had forgotten her. He did 
not look happy. . . . Something dark had 
touched him. . . . 

“Is it something you want that you cannot 
get, Signor?” she asked him in a grave little 
voice. 

He turned his eyes to her, and she saw there 
was smoldering fire beneath their surface 
brightness. 


198 


FANTASY 


“No, Signorina, it is something that I want 
and that I can get.” 

“There is no difficulty there,” she mur- 
mured. 

“No?” His tone held mockery. “The diffi- 
culty is in me. ... I don't want to want it.” 

His eyes continued to rest on her in ironic 
smiling. 

“Signorina, what would you do if you 
wanted a cake, oh, such a beautiful cake, all 
white icing and lovely sugar outside . . . and 
within — well, something that was very, very 
bad for the digestion? Only the first bite 
would be good, you see. But such a first bite ! 
And you wanted it — because the icing was so 
marvelous and the sugar so sweet. . . . And 
if you had wanted that cake a long time, oh, 
before you knew what a cheating thing it was 
within, and if you had been denied it and sud- 
denly found it was within your reach ?” 

He broke ofif with a laugh. 

Slowly she asked, “And would you have to 
eat the cake if you took the first bite?” 

199 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


His voice was harsh. “To the last crumb.” 

“Then I would not bite.” 

“But the frosting, Signorina, the pretty pink 
and white frosting!” 

So bitter was his laugh that the girl grew 
older in understanding. She thought of the 
girl she had seen by his side in the restaurant, 
the girl whose eyes had been as blue as the sea 
and her hair yellow as amber . . . the girl 
who had angled for Bob Martin’s money. 

She remembered that Barry Elder had of 
late inherited some money. 

Impulsively she leaned towards him, her eyes 
dark and pitiful in her white face. 

“Do not touch it,” she whispered. “Do not. 
I do not want you to be unhappy ” 

Utterly she understood. His absurd meta- 
phor was no protection against her. She re- 
membered all Cousin Jane’s implications, all 
the bald revelations of Johnny Byrd. 

Somehow he had come to know that the 
heart of Leila Grey was a cheating thing, yet 
for the sake of the beauty which had so teased 


200 


FANTASY 


him, for the glamorous loveliness of those blue 
eyes and rosy tints, he was almost ready to 
let himself be borne on by his inclinations. . . . 

Barry Elder looked startled at that earnest 
little whisper and his eyes met hers unguarded 
a full minute, then a whimsical smile touched 
his lips to softness. 

‘Tm afraid you have a tender heart, Maria 
Angelina Santonini,” he said. "You want all 
the world to have nice wholesome cake, beauti- 
fully frosted — don’t you?” 

Her gravity refused his banter. "Not all 
the world. Only those for whom realities mat- 
ter. Only those — those like you, Signor — who 
could feel pain and disillusionment.” 

"In God’s green earth, what do you know of 
disillusionment, child?” 

"I am no child, Signor.” 

"I don’t believe that you are.” He looked at 
her with new seriousness. 

"And I am horribly afraid,” he continued, 
"that you have an inkling into my absurd sym- 
bols of speech.” 


201 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


That brought her eyes back to his and there 
was something indefinably touching in their 
soft, deprecating shyness. . . . Barry’s gaze 
lingered unconsciously. 

He began to wonder about her. 

He had wondered about her that night at 
the restaurant, he remembered — wondered and 
forgotten. He had been unhappy that night, 
with the peculiar unhappiness of a naturally 
decisive man wretchedly in two minds, and she 
had given him a half hour of forgetfulness. 

Afterwards he had concluded that his im- 
pressions had played him false, that no 
daughter of to-day could possibly be as touch- 
ingly young, as innocently enchanting. 

But she was quite real, it seemed. And she 
sat there upon his hearth rug with her eyes like 
pools of night. . . . What in the world had 
happened to her in this America to which she 
had come in such gay confidence ? What was 
she trying to hide? 

What in all the sorry, stupid world had put 

202 


FANTASY 


that shadow into her look, that hurt droop to 
her lips? 

He could not conceive that real tragedy 
could so much as brush her with the tips of its 
wings, but some trouble was there, some diffi- 
culty. 

His pipe was out but he drew on it absently. 
Maria Angelina snuggled closer and closer 
into her pile of cushions and went to sleep. 

After she was asleep he rose and stood look- 
ing down at her, and he found his heart queerly 
touched by that scratched cheek and the child- 
ish way she tucked her hand under the other 
cheek as she slept. 

Also he was fascinated by the length of her 
black lashes. 

Very carefully he covered her with blankets. 

Then he yawned, looked at his watch, smiled 
to himself and with a blanket of his own he 
stretched himself upon the fur rug at her 
feet. 


CHAPTER XI 


MORNING LIGHT 

M aria Angelina had no difficulty 

at all in recollecting where she was 
when she came to herself next morn- 
ing, for her dreams had been growing sharper 
and sharper with reality. In those dreams she 
was forever climbing down mountain sides, 
tripping, stumbling, down, down, forever 
down, until at last there surged through her 
the warmth of that cabin fire and the memory 
of Barry Elder's care. 

She opened her eyes. The warmth of the 
dream fire was a blaze of sunlight that fell 
across it. The fire itself a charred mass of 
embers upon a mound of gray ashes. Upon the 
hearth stood the disreputable remnants of her 
sodden shoes. 

For a few moments she lay still, her con- 
204 


MORNING LIGHT 


sciousness invaded with its rush of memories. 
She felt very direfully stiff when she thought 
about it, but after the first moment she did 
not th^nk about it. 

She sat up and looked eagerly about. 

There were no shadows now; the sunlight 
was streaming in through the cabin's three 
windows and through the door that stood open 
into a world of forest green. She heard birds 
singing and the sound of running water. Bar- 
ry Elder was nowhere to be seen. 

The cabin was one room, an amazing room, 
its unconcealed simplicities blazoning them- 
selves cheerfully in the light. There were rus- 
tic tables and comfortable chairs; there was a 
couch untouched, apparently, save that it had 
been denuded of the cushions that lay now 
about her. There was a small black stove and 
pans on it and dishes on a stand. There was a 
chest of drawers and along the walls were low 
open shelves of books, the shelves topped with 
a miscellany of pipes and pictures and playing 
cards. 


205 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


Between two windows stood a large table 
buried in books and papers with a typewriter 
poking its head above the confusion. 

So he really was writing a play — another 
play. She hoped, remembering Cousin Jim's 
remark, that he would not put too much Har- 
vard in. 

She got to her feet — with wincing reluctance 
for every muscle in her small person made 
its lameness felt, and she limped when she be- 
gan to walk. The rejected pile of clothing had 
disappeared from her side, but the fringed 
moccasins were left, and very humbly she drew 
them on. Her stockings were not those in 
which a Santonini desires to be discovered ! 

Uncertainly she moved towards the door, 
her stiffly dried white skirt rattling at each 
move. It was a battleground of a skirt where 
black mud and green grass stains struggled 
for preeminence, and her poor middy blouse, 
she thought, was in little better plight. 

She had a sudden, half hysterical thought of 
Lucia's face, if Lucia could see her now, and a 
206 


MORNING LIGHT 


queer little gulp of laughter caught in the lump 
in her throat! 

“Morning, Signorina ! A merry morning to 
you.” 

Up the grassy bank before the cabin Barry 
Elder came swinging towards her, a lithe fig- 
ure in brown knickers and white shirt rolling 
loosely open at the throat. His face was 
flushed and his brown, close-cropped curls were 
wet as if he had been ducking them into the 
cold river water. 

He waved one hand gayly; the other was 
carrying a pail of water. 

“You look so clean!” gave back Maria An- 
gelina impetuously, her laughter rising to meet 
his, but her sensitive blood coloring her face 
before his gaze. 

“There’s the entire river to wash in. I 
thought you’d like it better out of doors so I’ve 
built you a dressing room. . . . Meanwhile 
the commissary will be working. Don’t be too 
long, for breakfast will be ready,” he told her, 
passing by her into the house, with a gesture 
207 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


of direction as if it were the most matter of 
fact thing in the world for young men to cook 
breakfast and for young ladies to wash in 
rivers. 

So Maria Angelina followed his directions 
and went down into the grove of young birches 
that he called her dressing-room. 

Here greenness was all about her, and 
through the delicate, interlacing boughs before 
her even the river was shut out, except one 
eddying stream of it that swerved in beneath 
her feet. There was lovely freshness in the 
morning air, a lovely brightness in the sky 
above her. It was a dressing-room for a 
nymph of the woods, for a dryad, for Diana 
herself. 

Gratefully she stooped to the cold water at 
her feet. There on the bank, upon a spread 
towel, she discovered soap and fresh towels, 
a comb and a pair of military brushes, still 
wet from recent washing. He was very sweet 
and thoughtful, that Barry Elder. 

Valiantly she attacked that tangled hair of 
208 


MORNING LIGHT 


hers, reducing it to the old submissive braids 
which she coroneted about her head, fastening 
them with twigs as best she could, and then 
she washed deliciously in that cold, running 
stream. It must be wonderful, she felt, to be 
a man and to live like this. One could forget 
the world in such a place. . . . 

Sandy dashed upon her, scattering the gath- 
ering darkness of her thoughts, and she yielded 
to the young impulse to splash and romp with 
him before returning with him to the cabin. 

She felt shy about reentering that house 
. . . and Barry Elder's presence. 

A rich aroma of coffee greeted her upon the 
threshold. So did her host's voice in mock 
severity. 

“I sent Sandy to bring you in — and I was 
just coming after the two of you. . . . Will 
you sit here? I did have a dressy thought of 
setting up a table out of doors but this is 
handier — nearer the stove, you know. You’ve 
no idea of the convenience of it." 

"But you are getting me so many meals," 
209 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


protested Maria Angelina, confronted by a 
small table which he had spread for two before 
the fireplace. Within the hearth he had 
kindled a small and cheerful blaze. 

‘Til agree to keep it up as long as you eat 
them.” 

Swiftly Barry turned the browning ham 
from the iron spider into a small platter and 
deposited it upon the table with a flourish. 
Then he placed the granite coffeepot at her 
right hand. 

“I made it with an egg,” he said proudly. 
“Will you pour, Signorina, while I cut this? 
That’s genuine canned cream — none of your 
execrable Continental hot milk for me! And 
I like my cream first with three lumps of sugar, 
please.” 

He smiled blithely upon her as with a deep 
and delicious constraint her small hands 
moved, housewifely, among his cups. 

“These aren’t French rolls,” he murmured, 
“but I promise you that they are cold enough 
for a true Italian breakfast, and there is honey 


210 


MORNING LIGHT 


and there is jam — and here, Signorina, is ham, 
milk- fed, smoke-cured, and browned to make 
the best chef of Sherry’s pale with envy and 
despair. ... I thank you,” and he accepted the 
cup of coffee from her hand with another 
direct smile that deepened the confusion of the 
girl’s spirit. 

A dream had succeeded the nightmare, a 
fairy tale of a dream. It was unreal ... it 
was a bubble that would break . . . but it was 
a spell, an enchantment. 

She forgot that she was tired and bruised; 
she forgot her stained clothes; she forgot her 
outrageous past and her terrifying future. 

Oblivious and bewitched, she smiled across 
the table into Barry Elder’s eyes and poured 
his coffee and ate his bread and jam. The 
amazing youth in her forgot for those mo- 
ments all that it had suffered and all that it 
must meet. She was floating, floating in the 
web of this beautiful unreality. 

And Barry Elder himself appeared a very 
different person from that bitter young man 


21 1 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


who had stared desperately into the fire and 
talked about cake and disillusionment. In spite 
of his lack of sleep there was nothing in the 
least haggard about his young face ; he looked 
remarkably alert and interested in life, and his 
eyes were very gentle and his smile very sweet. 

Perhaps there was something of a dream to 
him in the presence of a fairy like young crea- 
ture who had blown in with the storm and 
slept upon his sheltering hearth. Perhaps there 
was an enchantment to him in the exquisite 
young face across the table, the shy, soft eyes, 
the delicate pale contours. 

Into their absorption came a shattering 
knock upon the door. Instantly the nightmare 
was upon Maria Angelina. She was tense, 
her eyes wide, her lips parted. And as the 
knock was repeated, one hand, wide-fingered 
in fright, was raised as if to ward off some 
palpable blow. 

“Oh, let me hide,” she breathed across the 
table into Barry Elder’s ears. 


212 


MORNING LIGHT 


Fortunately the latch was on the door. 

“Who’s there?” said Barry Elder raising his 
voice to cover her reiterated whisper. In ne- 
gation he gestured her to silence. 

“Hello, hello there, I say !” 

It was the voice of Johnny Byrd and Maria 
Angelina half rose from her chair and clutched 
Barry Elder’s arm as he moved towards the 
summons. 

“Do not let him in,” she gasped. “That is 
the man — last night ” 

The dog’s barking was drowning her words. 
Johnny called again. 

“Anybody in? Here you wake up — anybody 
here?” 

Barry Elder had stood still at her words. 
His expression changed. He turned and 
pointed to a blanket from the floor flung over 
a chair. 

She slipped behind it. 

Calling to his dog to behave and keep still, 
Barry stepped over to the door and opened it. 

“Oh, Barry Elder ! Gee, I thought this was 
213 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


your place but I didn't know you were here,” 
Johnny Byrd declared in relief. “I saw the 
smoke and knew there was somebody about. 
. . . Gee, have you got any food?” 

Slowly Barry surveyed him. 

Johnny Byrd was not punctiliously turned 
out; he was streaked and muddied; his blue 
eyes were rimmed with red as if his night's 
rest had not been wholly soothing; he had no 
cap and his hair had clearly been combed back 
by fingers into its restless roach. 

Barry's eyes appreciated each detail. “Hel- 
lo, Johnny,” he remarked without affability. 
“How did you happen to toddle over for break- 
fast?” 

Johnny was not critical of tones. “Oh, never 
mind the damned details,” he said bitterly. 
“Gawd, I could eat a raw cow. . . . Say, you 
haven't seen any one pass here lately, have 
you? I mean has any one been by at all?” 

“I haven't seen any one pass here at all,” 
said Barry Elder. 

“Sure? But have you been looking out? 

214 


MORNING LIGHT 


Say, what other way is there — Oh, my Lord, is 
that coffee? Or do I only dream I smell it? I 
haven’t had a bite since the middle of yester- 
day. Let me get to it/' 

But Barry Elder did not spring to the duties 
of his hostship. He did not even move aside 
to permit Johnny Byrd to spring to his own 
assistance — which Johnny showed every symp- 
tom of doing. He continued to stand obstruct- 
ingly in the middle of his log doorstep, one 
hand on the knob of the half closed door be- 
hind him, his eyes fixed very curiously on 
Johnny's flushed disorder. 

“What kind of an 'any one' are you looking 
for?” said Barry slowly. 

“Oh — a — well, I guess you’ve got to help me 
out on this. You know the country. There’s 
no use stalling. It’s a girl — a foreign-looking 
girl.” 

“And what are you doing at six in the morn- 
ing looking for a foreign-looking girl ?” 

“It’s the darndest luck,” Johnny broke out 
explosively. “We — we got lost last night go- 

215 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


in g to a picnic on Old Baldy— and then we got 
separated ” 

“How?” 

“How?” Johnny stared back at Barry Elder 
and found something oddly fixed and challeng- 
ing in that young man's eyes. 

“Why how — how does any one get sepa- 
rated?” he threw back querulously. 

“I can’t imagine — especially when one is re- 
sponsible for a girl.” 

“Gosh, Barry, you’re talking like a grand- 
mother. Aren’t you going to give me any- 
thing to eat? What’s the matter with you, 
anyway? You act devilish queer ” 

Again he confronted the coldness of Barry’s 
gaze and his own face changed suddenly, with 
swift surmise. 

“Say, has she been here?” he broke out. 
“You’ve seen her, haven’t you? I was sure I 
saw tracks. . . . Has she — has she told you 
anything?” 

Barry leaned a little nearer the door-frame, 
drawing the door closer behind him. Through 
216 


MORNING LIGHT 


the crack Sandy’s pointed noise and exploring 
eyes were fixed inquiringly upon the visitor 
and he whined eagerly as, scenting disappro- 
bation in the air, he yearned to meet this 
trouble halfway. 

“I think you had better,” Barry told him. 

“Better? Better what?” 

“Better tell me — everything.” 

“Oh, all right, all right ! I’ve nothing to con- 
ceal. I didn’t go off my chump and behave 
like a darn lunatic in grand opera !” 

Then very quickly Johnny veered from 
anger into confidence. 

“Here’s the whole story — and there’s noth- 
ing to it. She’s crazy — crazy with her foreign 
notions, I tell you. At first I thought she was 
trying to put something over on me, but I guess 
she’s just genuinely crazy. It’s the way she 
was brought up. They go mad over there and 
bite if you’re left alone in a room with a 
girl.” 

Definitely Barry waited. 

“We were up there on the mountain,” said 
217 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


Johnny more lucidly. “We’d lost the others — 
no fault of ours, Barry — you needn't look like 
a movie censor — and we found we'd got to 
make a night of it. We were just worn out 
and going in circles. And she — I give you my 
word I didn’t do one gosh-darned thing, but 
that girl just naturally took on and raved about 
wanting me to marry her and blew me up when 
I said I hadn't asked her and then — then — 
when I tried to get shelter in a little old 
shack we'd stumbled on she just up and bolted. 
She " 

His words died away. His eyes dropped be- 
fore the blaze that met them. 

Very slowly Barry formulated his feelings. 

“You — infernal " 

“Hold on there, I'm not any such thing." 

Through the bluster of Johnny's rally a really 
injured innocence made its outcry. “She had 
no more reason to bolt than a — a grand- 
mother." Grandmothers appeared to be John- 
ny's sole figure of comparison. “You're get- 
218 


MORNING LIGHT 


ting this dead wrong, Barry. . . . Look here, 
what do you take me for?” 

“That's a large question,” said Barry slowly. 
But his tone was milder though far from re- 
assuring. “But do you tell me that she asked 
you to marry her ?” 

“I do. She did. Just like that — out of a 
clear sky.” 

“But what was the reason ?” 

“There wasn’t a reason, I give you my word, 
Barry.” 

“You hadn’t been saying anything to her — 
to suggest it?” 

Johnny Byrd’s face changed unhappily. His 
sunburned warmth deepened to a brick red. 

“Why, no — not about marrying. Oh, hang 
it all, Barry, don’t act as if you never kissed 
a pretty girl ! Oh, she pretended she thought 
that was proposing to her — just as if a few 
friendly words and a half kiss meant anything 
like that. . . . I’ll own I was gone on her,” 
Johnny found himself suddenly announcing, 
“but when she was taking marriage for 
219 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


granted right off it sounded too much like a 
hold-up and I flared all over.” 

“A hold-up?” 

“Oh, thumb screws, you know — the same 
old quick-step to the altar. I hadn’t done a 
thing, I tell you, but it looked as if she thought 
that our being there was something she could 
stage a scene on and so I thought — you don’t 
know what things have been tried on me be- 
fore,” he broke off to protest at Barry’s ex- 
pression. 

Mutteringly he offered, “You other fellows 
may think you know a little bit about side- 
stepping girls but when it comes to any kind 
of a bank roll — they’re like starving Armeni- 
ans at sight of food. I’d had ’em try all sorts 
of things. . . . But I own, now, she was just 
going according to her foreign ways. She 
must have been half scared to death. And she 
— she is pretty crazy about me ” 

“I am not pretty crazy about you, Johnny 
Byrd!” 

The door behind Barry was wrenched from 


220 


MORNING LIGHT 


his holding and flung violently open and Maria 
Angelina appeared upon the threshold, a defi- 
ant little image of war. Deadly pale, except 
for that scarlet stain across her cheek, her eyes 
blazing, there was something so mortally hon- 
est in the indignant anger that possessed her 
that Johnny Byrd unconsciously fell back a 
step, and Barry Elder stood aside, his own gaze 
lit with concern and wonder. 

“I am despising you for a coward and a 
flirter, ,, said Maria Angelina in a low but ex- 
ceedingly penetrative voice, and so intense was 
her command of the situation that neither man 
found humor, then, in the misused word. 

“You make love to girls when you mean 
nothing by it — you get them lost in the woods 
and then refuse the marriage that any gentle- 
man, even an indifferent gentleman, would of- 
fer ! And then you behave like a savage. You 
bully and try to force your way into the actual 
room of shelter with me!” 

“You see!” Johnny waved his hand help- 
lessly at her and looked appealingly at Barry 


221 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


for a gleam of masculine right-mindedness. 
“She — she wanted me to stay out in the rain, 
Barry.” 

“But as it was, she stayed out in the rain and 
you slept in the shelter.” 

“She ran, I’m telling you. I couldn’t chase 
her forever, could I? I tried to track her as 
soon as it got a little light and I could see where 
she’d been sliding and slipping along, and 
honestly, I’ve been nearly bats with worry till 
I got a trace of her again back in the woods.” 

Barry Elder turned towards the girl. 

“And that’s the whole story, Signorina? 
That’s all there is to it?” 

“All?” Maria Angelina echoed bewilder- 
edly. She thought there was enough and to 
spare. It seemed to her that she had related 
the destruction of her lifetime. 

She stopped. She would not cry again be- 
fore Johnny Byrd. She called on all her pride 
to keep her firm before him. 

A queer change came over Barry Elder’s 
expression. The light that seemed to be shin- 


222 


MORNING LIGHT 


ing in the back of his eyes was bright again. 
He looked at Maria Angelina in a thoughtful 
silence, then he turned to Johnny Byrd. 

“I don't think you know how serious a busi- 
ness this is in Italy," he told him. “You know, 
there where a girl cannot even see a man 
alone " 

“Well, we don't need to cable it to Italy, do 
we?" Johnny demanded in disgust. “It isn't 
going to spill any beans here. But it would 
look fine, wouldn't it, if I came back to the 
Lodge yelling to marry her?" 

“Right you are. That is it, Signorina," 
Barry Elder agreed very promptly. “That's 
the way it would look in America. Being lost 
is an unpleasant accident. Nothing more — 
between young people of good family. Not 
that young people of good families make a 
practice of being lost," he supplemented, his 
eyes dancing in spite of himself at Maria An- 
gelina's deepening amaze, “but when anything 
like that happens — as it has before this in the 
Adirondacks — people don't start an ugly scan- 
223 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


dal. They may talk a little of course, but it 
won’t do you any real harm. . . . And it 
wouldn’t be quite nice for Johnny to go rush- 
ing about offering you marriage. The occa- 
sion doesn’t demand it in the least.” 

Helplessly she regarded him. . . . She felt 
utterly astray — astray and blundering. . . . 

“Would Cousin Jane think so?” she ap- 
pealed. 

“She would,” averred Barry stoutly, over 
the twinge of an inner qualm. “And so 
would your own mother, if she were here.” 

But there Maria Angelina was on solid 
ground. 

“You know little about that/' she told him 
with spirit. “If I were lost in Italy ” 

But it was so impossible, being lost in Italy, 
that Maria Angelina could only break off and 
guard a bewildered silence. 

“Then I expect your mother had better not 
know,” was all the counsel that Barry Elder 
could offer, realizing doubtfully that it was 
far from a counsel of perfection. “You had 
224 


MORNING LIGHT 


better let that depend upon Mrs. Blair/' 

“I tried to tell her all this," Johnny broke 
in with an accent of triumph. 

But Maria Angelina was looking only at 
Barry Elder. 

“Can you tell me that it is nothing?" she 
said pitifully, her eyes big and black in her 
white face. “To have been gone all night with 
that young man — to have been found by you — 
another young man? Even if the Americans 
make light of it — is it not what you call an es- 
capade ?" 

“I have to admit that it's an escapade — an 
accidental escapade," Barry qualified carefully. 
“But I don't know any way out of it — unless 
we all stand together," he said slowly, “and 
all pretend that you got lost alone and found 
alone. That's very simple, really, and I think 
perhaps it would make things easier for you." 

“Now you’re saying something!" Johnny 
was jubilant. “Absolute intelligence — gleam 
of positive genius. . . She was lost alone. 
Right after the thunder shower. Missed the 
225 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


others and I went to a high place to look for 
them and we never found each other. . . . 
Spent the night searching for her,” Johnny 
threw in carelessly, marking out a neat little 
role for himself. “That's the story — eh, 
what?” 

“Oh could we — could we do that?” Maria 
Angelina implored with quivering lips. 

“Of course we can do that. Only you've 
got to stick to that story like grim death — no 
making any lfttle break about climbing the 
mountain top and things like that, you know.” 

“You may trust me,” said Maria fervently. 

“Leave it to your Uncle Dudley,” Johnny re- 
assured him. “But, look here, Barry, do you 
want me to die on your doorstep?” he de- 
manded, his hunger returning as his agitation 
subsided. 

“Oh, sit down, Johnny, and I'll bring you 
something,” said Barry at last. “You had bet- 
ter keep your eye on the trail to see if any one 
else is coming along. Two in a morning is 
quite stirring,” he said deliberately. “I'm sure 
226 


MORNING LIGHT 


the fire is still burning — unless you’d prefer to 
have him perish of starvation ?” he paused to 
inquire politely of the girl, his twinkling eyes 
bringing a sudden irrepressible answer to her 
lips. 

“Yes, that will be best for everybody’s feel- 
ings,” he rattled on, from the interior of the 
cabin, referring not to Johnny’s demise but to 
the construction of a defensive narrative. 
“Each of you wandered about all night alone. 
. . . Here’s some ham, Johnny, and cold toast. 
There’ll be hot coffee in an instant. . . .Now 
remember you crossed the river just after the 
thunder storm and separated to try different 
trails. And you never found each other . . . 
That’s simple, isn’t it? And you, Johnny, 
climbed the wrong mountain and slept in a 
shack and came down this morning and re- 
turned to the Lodge. You must show up there, 
worried as blazes and tearing your hair,” he 
instructed the devouring Johnny who merely 
nodded, tearing wolfishly at the cold toast. 

“But before you reach the Lodge I will ease 
227 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


the anxiety there by telephoning that I have 
just found Maria Angelina,” went on Barry, 
using quite unconsciously the name by which 
he was thinking of the girl. 

He turned to her, “With your permission, I 
shall say that I have just found you, that I 
have given you something to eat and while 
you were resting I went to telephone. Does 
that make you any happier ?” 

Her answering look was radiant. 

“Now, remember — don’t change a word of 
this. . . . Here’s your coffee, Johnny. When 
you reach the Lodge, don’t forget that you 
haven’t seen me and that you are still un- 
fed ” 

“Unfed is right,” said Johnny ungratefully. 
“Oh, my gosh, I am stiff as a poker. What 
do you say, Barry, to our doping this out 
around that fire — or have you got some other 
little thing in there you are keeping incog as 
it were?” 

Refreshed and unabashed he grinned at 
them. 


228 


MORNING LIGHT 


But Barry did not offer his fire. 

“You'd better cut on before you are discov- 
ered/' he advised. “It's a long way to go — like 
Tipperary. And I’ll hurry off to Peter’s 
place. . . .You strike over that shoulder 
there and down the trail to the right and you’ll 
find the main road. It’s shorter than the 
river. Besides you can’t use the river trail or 
you would have found me. . . . Now mind — 
don’t change a word of it.” 

“Sure, I’ve got it down. Well, I’ll be off 
then!” 

But Johnny was not off. He hesitated a 
moment, turning very obviously to Maria An- 
gelina, who stood silent upon the doorstep, and 
it was Barry who took himself suddenly off 
around the corner of the cabin, with a plate of 
scraps for the vociferous Sandy. 

Embarrassedly Johnny muttered, “I say, Ri- 
Ri, I’m sorry.” 

Her expression did not change. She said 
levelly, “I’m sorry, too. I did not understand.” 

“I didn’t understand, either.” 

229 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


Both stood silent. Then he spoke in a hur- 
ried, even a flurried way in a very low tone in- 
deed. 

“But I — I didn't mean to be a quitter. Look 
here, I didn't realize that it was just the look 
of things you were after and not my — my ” 

“Your money, Signor?" said Ri-Ri clearly. 

He grew red. “I've got some queer experi- 
ences," he jerked out. 

“I should think, Signor, that you would." 

“Oh, hang that Signor! I don't blame you 
for being a frost, Ri-Ri, for I guess I was 
pretty rotten to you — but I wasn't throwing 
you down — honestly. I was just mulish, I 
guess, because you were trying to stampede me. 
And I was fighting mad over the entire busi- 
ness and had to take it out on somebody. If 
you'd just laughed and petted a fellow a 
little ” 

He broke off and looked at her hopefully. 

Maria Angelina gave no signs of warmth. 
Her eyes were enigmatic as black diamonds; 
and her mouth was a red bud of scorn. Her 
230 


MORNING LIGHT 


dignity was immense for all that her braids 
had come down from their coronet and were 
hanging childishly about her shoulders; the 
loose strands fluttering about her face. 

Johnny wanted to put his hands out and 
touch them. And he wanted to grip the small 
shoulders beneath that middy blouse and shake 
them out of that aloof perverseness . . . they 
had been such soft, nestling shoulders last 
night. ... 

“You know I — I'm really crazy about you,” 
he said quickly. “Of course you know it — 
you had a right to know it. I was gone on 
you from the moment I first saw you. You were 
so — different. I thought it was just a crush — 
that I could take it or leave it, you know — but 
you are different. A man’s just got to have 
you ” 

He waited. He had an idea that he had elu- 
cidated something. He felt that he had raised 
an issue. But Maria Angelina stood like the 
bright eternal snow, unhearing and unheeding 
and most devilishly cold. 

231 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“Only last night," said Johnny, explaining 
feverishly again, “you were so funny and 
grand opera and all and I was mad and dis- 
gusted and grouchy and I — I didn't know how 
much I cared myself. Look here, forget it, will 
you, and begin again?" 

“Begin what again?" 

“Well, don’t begin, then. Let’s finish. Let’s 
get married. I do want you, Ri-Ri — I want 
you like the very deuce. After you had gone — 
Gee, it was an awful night when I got over my 
mad. And coming down the mountain this 
morning — I didn’t know what I was going to 
find ! ... So let’s forget it all — and get mar- 
ried," he repeated. 

There was a pause. “Do you mean this?" 
said a still voice. 

“Every word. That’s what I was planning 
to tell you when I was running down the moun- 
tain this morning. . . . And last night — if 
you’d gone at me differently." 

He looked at her. Something in that young 
232 


MORNING LIGHT 


figure made him say quickly, “Will you, Ri- 
Ri?” 

“I should like you,” said Maria Angelina in 
a clear implacable little voice, “to say that 
again, Signor Byrd, if you are in earnest.” 

“Oh, all right. Come on back, Barry. . . . 
I’m asking Ri-Ri to marry me — and we'll an- 
nounce the engagement any time she says. . . . 
There. . . . Now I've got that off my chest.” 

“Thank you,” said Maria Angelina. She 
looked neither at the embarrassed Johnny nor 
the astounded Barry. “I will think about it 
and I will let you know, Signor Byrd. Now 
please go.” 

“Well, of all the ” said Johnny blankly. 

Then he looked at her. She was staring be- 
fore her at something that she alone could 
see. Her look was rather extraordinary. It 
occurred to Johnny that after all she had a 
right to tantalize — and this was really no mo- 
ment for capitulation. 

To-night, now, after dinner, when every one 
was fed and warm and comfy. . , . 

233 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


Still she might give a fellow a decent look. 
Hang it, he wasn’t a drygoods clerk offering 
himself ! 

“Come on, let her alone now,” cut in Barry 
with a certain savage energy that woke wonder 
in Johnny before it had time to wake resent- 
ment. 

“We must be off,” Barry went on. “Come 
on, the first part of our way lies together and 
we’d better hurry or some searching party will 
find us. Remember, you’ve only been here an 
hour,” he called back to Maria Angelina. He 
did not look at her, but added, in that same off- 
hand way, “Better go in and get some sleep 
and I’ll telephone the Lodge from Peter’s and 
have a motor and a horse sent after you.” 

“I’ll come with the motor all right,” Johnny 
promised. 

“Don’t worry,” called back Barry, and 
waved his hand with an air of gayety but there 
was no laughter on his face as he started off 
over the hill with Johnny Byrd. 

234 


CHAPTER XII 


JOURNEY’S END 

O VER the hills went Johnny Byrd and 
down the trail and into a grove of 
pines. 

Up to the left went Barry Elder, out of sight 
among the larches. He walked briskly at first, 
his face clouded but set. Then he walked 
slower, his face still clouded but unsettled. 

Decidedly his pace lagged. Then it stopped. 
He looked back. . . . He went a little way back 
and stopped again. . . . Then he went on go- 
ing back without stopping. 

His face was much clearer now. 

Maria Angelina had climbed a mountain and 
descended a mountain ; she had wandered and 
struggled and scrambled for hours till she was 
faint with exhaustion; she had been through 
235 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


the extremes of hope and despair and shame 
and anger and heart-breaking indignation till 
it seemed as if her spirit must break with her 
body. 

For recovery she had had some scant hours 
of sleep and a portion of food. 

And now, instead of succumbing to the mor- 
tal weariness that should have been upon her, 
instead of closing the big eyes that burned in 
her head, she stood at the cabin door with up- 
lifted face listening to the song of a bird that 
she did not know. 

Then she reentered the cabin ; but not to sink 
into a chair, not to release her bruised feet 
from the weight of her tiredness. 

She cleared the table and piled the dishes 
in a huge pan upon the little stove. Upon the 
stove she discovered water heated in a kettle 
and she poured it, splashing, over the panful. 
She found three cloths of incredible blackness 
drying upon a little string in a corner by the 
stove, and after smiling very tenderly upon 
236 


JOURNEY’S END 


them she abandoned them in favor of a clean 
hand towel. 

She restored the washed dishes to their ob- 
vious places upon the shelves and with a broom 
she battled with the dust upon the floor and 
drove it out the open door. Then she swept 
up the hearth, singing as she swept, and tidied 
the arrangement of books, bait and tobacco 
upon the mantel, fingering them with shy curi- 
osity. 

“Maria Angelina !” said a voice at the door- 
way and Maria Angelina turned with a catch 
at her heart. 

It had taken Barry Elder a long time to re- 
trace those steps of his. 

Twice he had stopped in deep thought. Once 
he had pulled out a leather folder from his 
pocket and after regarding its sheaf of papers 
had sat down upon a stone and deliberately 
opened a long, much-creased-from-handling 
letter. It was dated a week before and it was 
headed York Harbor. It concluded with an 
invitation — and a question. 

237 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


After reading that letter Barry remained 
sunk in thought for a time longer than the 
reading had taken. 

All of his past was in that letter — and a 
great deal of his future in that invitation. 

Then he went deeper into his pocketbook 
and took out a small photograph. It was the 
one she had given him when he went to France 
— when she had been willing to inspire but not 
to bless him. For a long time, soberly, he 
gazed at the picture it disclosed, at the fair 
presentment of delightful youth. 

Never had he looked at that picture in just 
that way. He had known longing before it, 
and he had known bitterness quite as misplaced 
and quite as disproportionate. 

It affected him now in neither way. 

It was a beautiful picture — it was the pic- 
ture of a beautiful young woman. He ac- 
knowledged the beauty with generous appre- 
ciation. But he felt no inclination to go on 
staring, moonstruck, upon it; neither did he 
238 


JOURNEY’S END 


feel the impulse to thrust it hurriedly out of 
sight, as something with power to rend. 

It neither troubled him nor invited — though 
the girl was beautiful enough, he continued to 
admit. So were her pearls — and neither were 
genuine, thought Barry with more humor than 
a former adorer has any right to feel. 

Then he amended his thought. Something 
of her was real — the invitation in that letter — 
the inclination that he had always known she 
felt. It was just because it was a genuine im- 
pulse in her that he realized how strong was 
the calculation in her that had always been 
able to keep the errant inclination in check. 

And even when he was going to war . . . 
She had envisaged her future so shrewdly — 
either as wife or widow, he was certain, that 
she had given the photograph and not her 
hand. 

Later, Bob Martin became unavailable. And 
he, himself, acquired an income. 

It was not the income that tempted her, he 
was clearly aware, and he did her and himself 
239 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


the justice to perceive that it was the inclina- 
tion which prompted the invitation — but the 
inclination could now feel itself supported by 
an approving worldly conscience. 

He wondered now at the long struggle of his 
senses. He wondered at the death pangs of in- 
fatuation. 

Once more he looked at the picture in a 
puzzled way as if to make sure that the thing 
he felt — and the thing he didn’t feel — were in- 
dubitably real, and then he rose with a curious 
sense of lightness and yet sobriety, and, 
straightening his shoulders as if a burden had 
fallen from them, he retraced his steps towards 
the cabin. 

At the doorway he paused, for he heard 
Maria Angelina singing. Then he spoke her 
name. 

The song stopped. Maria Angelina turned 
towards him a face of flushed surprise. He 
discovered her quaintly with a jar of pickled 
frogs in her hand. 

“Maria Angelina, what are you doing?” 

240 


JOURNEY’S END 


“But these, Signor — what are these ?” 

“These? Oh — not for food, Maria An- 
gelina — even in my most desperate moments. 
. . . Maria Angelina, are you going to marry 
him?” 

She did not drop the frogs. Very carefully 
she put them back but with a shaking hand. 
All the rosy sparkle was swept out of her. Her 
eyes were averted. She looked suddenly har- 
assed, stubborn, almost furtive. 

No quick denial came springing from her. 

“I do not know,” she told him painfully. 

“You do not know?” 

There was something in the young man’s 
voice that made her glance rise to his. 

“Oh, it is not that I care for him!” said Ma- 
ria Angelina ingenuously. 

“Then why think of marrying him?” . 

“It may be — needful.” 

“Not after this story,” Barry Elder insisted. 

“It is not that — now.” She forced herself to 
meet his combative look. “It is because of — 
Julietta.” 


241 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


“Julietta! . . . Who the deuce is Julietta ?” 
“Oh, she is my sister, my older sister. I 
told you about her last night,” Maria Angelina 
reminded him. “She is the one I love so much. 
. . . And she is not pretty, at all — she is any- 
thing but pretty, though she is so good and 
dear — yet she will never marry unless she has 
a large dower. And there is nothing in her 
life if she does not marry. And there is no 
money for a large dower, but only for a little 
bit for her and a little bit for me. So they 
sent me on this visit to America, for here the 
men do not ask dowers and what was saved 

on me would help Julietta — and now ” 

Borne headlong on her flood of revelation 
Maria Angelina could not stop to watch the 
change in Barry Elder’s face. And she was 
utterly unprepared for the immense vehemence 
of the exclamation which cut into her con- 
sciousness with such startling effect that she 
stopped and gasped and swallowed uncertainly 
before finishing in an altered key, “And so I 
242 


JOURNEY’S END 


must marry in America — for Julietta’s dow- 


In an odd voice Barry offered, “You think 
it your duty — because Byrd is so rich ?” 

“I know it is my duty/’ she gave back, goad- 
ed to desperation, “but — but, oh, it is like that 
cake of yours, Signor — of a nothingness to me 
within !” 

Very abruptly Barry turned from her; he 
drove his hands deep into his pocket and 
strode across the room and back. He brought 
up directly in front of her. 

“Maria Angelina,” he said softly, “how old 
are you?” 

“Eighteen.” 

“How many men have you known?” 

“You, first, Signor, then the others here.” 

“But you did care for him,” he said. “You 
kissed him.” 

Her eyes dropped, her cheeks flamed and he 
saw her lips quiver — those soft, sensitive lips 
of hers which seemed to breathe such tender 
warmth and perfume like the warmth and per- 
243 


THE INNOCENT ADVENTURESS 


fume of a flower. But through the shine of 
tears her eyes came back to his. 

“No, Signor, it was he who kissed me — and 
without my consent! I did not kiss him — 
never, never, never !” 

“Is there such a difference ?” 

“But there is all the difference ” 

“Maria Angelina, you are sure that to kiss 
a man yourself, to kiss him deliberately, un- 
mistakably upon the lips, is a final seal and 
ultimate surrender, and that if you do not 
marry a man you have so kissed you would 
be no better than a worthless deceiver, an out- 
rageous flirt, an abandoned trifler ” 

She looked at him amazedly. 

His eyes were oddly dancing, his lips were 
curved in a boyish smile, infinitely merry, in- 
finitely tender ; the wind was blowing back the 
curly locks of hair from his face, giving it the 
look of a victorious runner, arrived at some 
swift goal. 

Back of him, through the open door of the 

244 


JOURNEY’S END 


cabin, the green and gold of the forest shone 
in translucent brightness. 

“But yes — that is true ” she stammered, 

not daring to trust that rush of happiness, that 
sweet and secret singing of her blood. 

“Then, Maria Angelina/’ said he gayly yet 
adoringly, “Maria Angelina, you little darling 
of the gods, come here instantly and kiss me. 
. . . For I am never going to let you go 
again.” 

u> 


THE END 





































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